4 ms·

I can remember putting ISA "hardcards" in my 286s and similar. Full circle!

jjoonathan 12y ago
I'm just happy that for once we got to see standards converge (SATA PHY ditched for PCIe) rather than proliferate. BTW, does anyone know if NVMe uses the ATA command set for side channel stuff like configuring encryption and the like?
- justincormack 12y ago
  No I dont think so, it has a new command set.
  - nzmsv 12y ago
    The NVMe command set is pretty close to the existing SCSI spec though. In case of security the commands are the SCSI Security Protocol IN/OUT. Shameless plug: if you want to work with this stuff, check out purestorage.com/jobs
    - jjoonathan 12y ago
      Hah, I wonder if it'll come full circle and we'll get to see AT commands sent over SCSI (all inside of NVMe). Revenge for ATAPI :P
      - nzmsv 12y ago
        There is already a standard for doing exactly that: passing through ATA commands wrapped in SCSI. This can come in handy when a SATA drive sits behind some bridge that speaks SCSI.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
But did they conform to the LIM[1] spec ? :-) They also had RAM drives you could buy. The point then as now is that increasing the "high performance" working set space of a program, increases the amount of transactional data that can be "in flight" during an operation, and that increases the overall size of the data set you can work with. I've been waiting for these boards to come down in price for about 4 years now. I started talking with Intel about them early on (we used their XM-25 SSDs because it was a price point for flash that was "enough" better than spinning rust that it made sense) and they insisted on trying to sell us the same flash chips on a PCIe card for 10x the dollars, I (and many others apparently) refused to pay that. Sure if you have a 'cost is no object' data base or something but for a large internet working set where revenue differences are measured in cents per thousand transactions? Not so much. I know one company that went so far as to design and build their own PCIe Flash card. I have heard it did great stuff for them. [1] LIM - Lotus-Intel-Microsoft spec for extended memory on IBM PC compatible machines.
- yuhong 12y ago
  hardcards have nothing to do with LIM.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    Wow, so much for relying on my memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory vs https://books.google.com/books?id=KjwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=286+hardcard&source=bl&ots=tUPGkGS8mi&sig=_7k1A79zs_A5nNFSmqmR2YTFXYY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jBAiVYH1OMitogTfmIHwAQ&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=286%20hardcard&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=KjwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=P... I was thinking of the plug-in expanded memory cards rather than the plug in hard drive cards.

I'm just happy that for once we got to see standards converge (SATA PHY ditched for PCIe) rather than proliferate. BTW, does anyone know if NVMe uses the ATA command set for side channel stuff like configuring encryption and the like?

justincormack 12y ago
No I dont think so, it has a new command set.
- nzmsv 12y ago
  The NVMe command set is pretty close to the existing SCSI spec though. In case of security the commands are the SCSI Security Protocol IN/OUT. Shameless plug: if you want to work with this stuff, check out purestorage.com/jobs
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    Hah, I wonder if it'll come full circle and we'll get to see AT commands sent over SCSI (all inside of NVMe). Revenge for ATAPI :P
    - nzmsv 12y ago
      There is already a standard for doing exactly that: passing through ATA commands wrapped in SCSI. This can come in handy when a SATA drive sits behind some bridge that speaks SCSI.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

But did they conform to the LIM[1] spec ? :-) They also had RAM drives you could buy. The point then as now is that increasing the "high performance" working set space of a program, increases the amount of transactional data that can be "in flight" during an operation, and that increases the overall size of the data set you can work with. I've been waiting for these boards to come down in price for about 4 years now. I started talking with Intel about them early on (we used their XM-25 SSDs because it was a price point for flash that was "enough" better than spinning rust that it made sense) and they insisted on trying to sell us the same flash chips on a PCIe card for 10x the dollars, I (and many others apparently) refused to pay that. Sure if you have a 'cost is no object' data base or something but for a large internet working set where revenue differences are measured in cents per thousand transactions? Not so much. I know one company that went so far as to design and build their own PCIe Flash card. I have heard it did great stuff for them. [1] LIM - Lotus-Intel-Microsoft spec for extended memory on IBM PC compatible machines.

yuhong 12y ago
hardcards have nothing to do with LIM.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Wow, so much for relying on my memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory vs https://books.google.com/books?id=KjwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=286+hardcard&source=bl&ots=tUPGkGS8mi&sig=_7k1A79zs_A5nNFSmqmR2YTFXYY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jBAiVYH1OMitogTfmIHwAQ&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=286%20hardcard&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=KjwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=P... I was thinking of the plug-in expanded memory cards rather than the plug in hard drive cards.