500,000 G5s?

[ffakr]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Its called RAID. Specifically RAID 5. In the next 2-5 years this is going to be standard in every PC. (Along with SATA.) It would be smart of Apple to get on the ball and at the very least have multiple drive slots to accommodate this NOW. RAID 5 requires at minimum 3 drives.
The beauty of RAID 5 is it adds redundancy so there is almost zero chance of data lost from a failed drive, and it speed up the system by distributing the data across 3 drives.
Again most workstations already are running some form of RAID be it RAID 0,1, or 5. It would be nice if Apple took this into consideration when they design their systems

You do know that RAID 5 puts additional overhead as the data needs to be encoded to span multiple drives with redundancy. Granted, this overhead shouldn't be significant considering running software RAID 5 on my last LinuxPPC box ran pretty well on a B&W G3. It is, however, a stretch to say that RAID 5 will automatically make your machine faster unless you have a proper RAID 5 controller... that is an extra processor to do the encoding. Real RAID cards (SCSI RAID cards) have a DSP on them for the RAID algorithm, and they have a large RAM buffer so your system can dump data into RAM and the card can encode the data properly when it can.

I don't disagree that a lot of vendors will add more RAID support to their motherboards (PC Motherboards) including RAID 5 support in the near future. It's already very common to see hardware RAID 0 and RAID 1 (stripped and mirrored) support in todays IDE chipsets.. a few even support IDE RAID 5 already.
I don't, however, agree that RAID 5 will be in common USE in PCs any time soon.
RAID is still an expensive option for most people. It requires (in all but RAID 0) a loss of useable drive space in return for redundancy. Most people don't like the idea of buying 2 - 120 GB drives to get 120 GB of space when they can buy one 250GB drive. Most people don't think about dataloss... or if they do, they figure they'll be good about backing up the important stuff.
Additionally, RAID is hard to implement on IDE systems. SATA has one drive per channel. Using SATA RAID 5 requires at least 3 SATA channels dedicated to your drives. If you are building parallel ATA RAID 5 arrays, you can't put 3 drives on 2 buses and expect reasonable performance. Because of the nature of Parallel ATA you can't access a master and a Slave on the same bus at the same time. In this case you need at least 3 (or more) seperate ATA channels for your RAID.
It's a whole lot easier with SCSI. You put all your drives on one bus. The number of drives you choose is usually dictated by the speed of the drives and the bandwidth available on the bus. There is a point with SCSI RAID 5 arrays where adding more drives slows the RAID down because there isn't enough bandwidth to feed all the devices.

This doesn't mean that Apple shouldn't support hardware RAID in a $3,000 computer. I think that Apple should at least give support for hardware L0 and L1 RAIDs. providing capacity for more drives and hardare RAID 5 would also be nice, but I still don't expect that most people would ever take advantage of it.

jmho
ffakr

 

[ffakr]

Originally posted by ddtlm
ffakr:
The Mac has the same bandwidth in most places as those P4's do, the only edge is in the PCI-X vs PCI department (remembering of course the the P4 only needs one FSB cause it has one processor).

well, the same bandwidth except in SMP processor to chipset bus(es) and PCI-x. I also, however, mentioned that the G5 ships with FW400, FW800, and spdif optical audio ports out of the box and these are usually extras on most PCs. It also has the option for integrated 802.11g and Bluetooth (though I honestly don't see the real value of wireless in a desktop these days)

And so do Opterons, especially the dual Opterons with quad memory channels.

You mention quad memory channels and 256 bit memory paths a few times. You know that in multiple processor Opterons still only have dual channel memory controllers. Multiple proc Opteron boards have seperate dual channel memory banks for each cpu, though the cpu's have processor to processor HT links (and I assume this is how cpus can access each other's memory). I don't think this could be characterized as having a 256 bit quad channel memory bus. The truth is that there are multiple dual channel memory buses (one per cpu). Personally, I think it's a hassle to have to populate multiple banks of memory in parallel.. but that's just me.

Hey if a Corvette outperforms a Ferrari, when only a fool buys the Ferrari (unless its about image).

well, yea it's image but it's also about quality, fit and finish, polish. Corvette's are sweet rides (wish I could afford another.. and not a beater this time ;-) but they aren't Ferrari.

Anyone willing to build their own dual-CPU PC can beat Apple's prices, the only expensive dual-CPU's PC's are the ones coming from Dell and such. The Tyan K8W mobo-of-doom runs $500 and about $1000 for two 2.0ghz 2-way Opterons, about $200 for 1GB of reg-ecc DDR-333 to fill it's 256-bit wide memory interface, $400 for the 256MB R9800 pro, $200 for a nice case, $100 for a super PSU, $100 for nice heatsinks, $200 for a DVD-R, $400 for some nice SATA hard disks, $600 for some 17" LCD... I'm thinking this costs about $3600. (Give or take a couple hundred.) That's a 64/32-bit machine, has more PCI-X slots and more bandwidth (in every way) than the G5, has an additional old 33-32 PCI slot, can hold and cool 4-6 drives in addition to 4-6 5" bays (depending on the case). It's not that I don't like the G5, BTW, its just that some realism needs to be dished out.

You can always build a PC cheaper than a mac. Vendors need to make some profit for building systems after all. Couple things though.. you didn't include your OS price. Also, you don't get a system warranty with OEM parts. If you buy shrink wrapped parts you're OK.. even though you have to deal with a dozen different companies for support on your machine. A lot of people buy OEM though and they get a lot of hassle when they try to get a warranty repair. I used to buy OEM parts by the case for a previous job and the response we'd often get from the vendor is 'you need to contact the OEM for that return'. Problem was, we were essentially the original equipment manufacturer because we bought the OEM parts from a distributor. More than a few hard drives went into the trash after agrueing for too long with manufacturers.

I think you're trying too hard to defend Apple's position.

I think you should re-read my posts here and elsewhere which consistently point out my opinions that Opteron is a great CPU, G5s should have more room for devices, you can build cheaper PCs than Macs... These points in no way mean I can't also defend the current macs based on their strengths and they also don't preclude me from airing my perceptions (as someone supporting Mac an PC users for 7 years) of what features users actually use/want/need.

Its no more crippled than the P4 was, or that the Opteron still is. The P4 was not only poor at running legacy code, but it had an expanded ISA to use, unlike the G5, which isn't too bad at legacy code, and has no expanded ISA. In 64-bit mode the Opteron has twice the registers to use vs older x86 chips. Of the three, the G5 was apparently the least divergent from its predecessor; about the only compiler-level optimization is to reorder the code thats already there.

Read the G5 optimization guide from Apple. There are quite a few differences in the architectures. G5s can have something like 10x as many in-flight instructions. They have dual FPs, they fetch altivec data differently than G4s, they don't have pseudo-little-endian mode op anymore...
There is a LOT of difference between the G5 and previous PPC desktop processors. I have to say that I think you're mistaken here.

"Up to ... up to ... up to" ... meanwhile, in the real world you're gona see much smaller gains.
And I'm firmly confident this will not happen. AltiVec optimization was a one-time gain and the G5 has nothing that revolutionary to add. Its a very nice chip and can be quite fast, but I don't see any software miracles coming.

That's a powerfull dismissal without much to back it up. I've seen the benefit that apps have seen from optimization already. Cinebench is MUCH faster after the developers optimized for the G5. The numbers I've seen from the Beta of xlc show code speed improvement of 30-70% over gcc 3.3.
You have any numbers or links to support your assumption that the G5 won't benefit greatly from software and compiler optimizations?

 

[SiliconAddict]

Originally posted by ffakr
You do know that RAID 5 puts additional overhead as the data needs to be encoded to span multiple drives with redundancy. Granted, this overhead shouldn't be significant considering running software RAID 5 on my last LinuxPPC box ran pretty well on a B&W G3. It is, however, a stretch to say that RAID 5 will automatically make your machine faster unless you have a proper RAID 5 controller... that is an extra processor to do the encoding. Real RAID cards (SCSI RAID cards) have a DSP on them for the RAID algorithm, and they have a large RAM buffer so your system can dump data into RAM and the card can encode the data properly when it can.

I don't disagree that a lot of vendors will add more RAID support to their motherboards (PC Motherboards) including RAID 5 support in the near future. It's already very common to see hardware RAID 0 and RAID 1 (stripped and mirrored) support in todays IDE chipsets.. a few even support IDE RAID 5 already.
I don't, however, agree that RAID 5 will be in common USE in PCs any time soon.
RAID is still an expensive option for most people. It requires (in all but RAID 0) a loss of useable drive space in return for redundancy. Most people don't like the idea of buying 2 - 120 GB drives to get 120 GB of space when they can buy one 250GB drive. Most people don't think about dataloss... or if they do, they figure they'll be good about backing up the important stuff.
Additionally, RAID is hard to implement on IDE systems. SATA has one drive per channel. Using SATA RAID 5 requires at least 3 SATA channels dedicated to your drives. If you are building parallel ATA RAID 5 arrays, you can't put 3 drives on 2 buses and expect reasonable performance. Because of the nature of Parallel ATA you can't access a master and a Slave on the same bus at the same time. In this case you need at least 3 (or more) seperate ATA channels for your RAID.
It's a whole lot easier with SCSI. You put all your drives on one bus. The number of drives you choose is usually dictated by the speed of the drives and the bandwidth available on the bus. There is a point with SCSI RAID 5 arrays where adding more drives slows the RAID down because there isn't enough bandwidth to feed all the devices.

This doesn't mean that Apple shouldn't support hardware RAID in a $3,000 computer. I think that Apple should at least give support for hardware L0 and L1 RAIDs. providing capacity for more drives and hardare RAID 5 would also be nice, but I still don't expect that most people would ever take advantage of it.

jmho
ffakr

Ya its amazing how much you learn when you bury your head in a book for your A+ tests. I think I'm going blind but at least I know my RAID 1 Duplexing from my RAID 5
Poor man's EIDE RAID isn't all that expensive. The card itself runs around $50-$150 depending on if its doing the encoding through software or via an onboard CPU. *shrugs* Its not a good method but EIDE RAID is still in its infancy right now. Hence the 2-5 year estimate. Then again I'm expecting PATA to go the way of the dodo and be replaced by SATA. As you mentioned the most expensive part of these devices is now the hard drive since you need, at minimum, 3 drives for striping. Not saying RAID is ready for prime time now for anyone other then the uber nerd but in a year or 2 *shrugs* very possible. And as Mac user are always claiming Macs have a longer lifespan then PC's. It would be nice to know that a $3,000 investment would be upgradeable to this tech in 2-3 years.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Bull. Or maybe they got lemons. But we are running 126 Dell Optiplex GX110's (36 Optiplex GX260's) in the office I work and we've had maybe 2 or 3 go bad on us. We got that model in 2000 and the only thing we've added to these systems is another 256 to bring up the RAM to 384MB. The systems are 550Mhz with 10GB drives and again they are running perfectly fine. Laptops are another matter. The hard drives are dieing on us left and right but Dell doesn’t make hard drives so *shrugs*

We've had numerous hard drive and zip drive issues with our 50 GX150s.

Dell doesn't make all the parts, they just use cheap ones.

 

[NusuniAdmin]

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
We've had numerous hard drive and zip drive issues with our 50 GX150s.

Dell doesn't make all the parts, they just use cheap ones.

Exactly

 

[MacRAND]

Re: if this is real

500,000 G5 Macs per Quarter

As a long time Mac user, I love all the new product from G5s to 20" iMac to the G4 iBooks and PowerBooks.
But, 500,000 Macs over a quarter may be good for Mac, until you consider that Dell sells 100,000 units per DAY. I didn't believe it when I was told, so I went to their corporate web site, checked their disclosure to shareholders and... per DAY!
Current sales levels of Macs are not going to improve market share that much.
That's not why we buy a Mac, and another, and... It's ease of use, design, and feel. We are in love.
With the new G5 Macs likely due out Jan 6th, prices on the current crop should drop dramatically as soon as the new Macs are in plentiful supply and are shipping. Eager to buy? Just wait.

 

[Macmaniac]

I'll add my name to that growing list as soon as the Rev B's come out

 

[ffakr]

maybe rev c for me

Unfortunately, renovating a house isn't cheap.. so I blew my developer discount on an office machine and I'm not buying my G5 till I renew my developer status (with my next WWDC ticket). I'm thinking I'm in for Rev. C unless it doesn't look like that is near by late next spring (early summer).

 

[fixyourthinking]

Re: Re: if this is real

Originally posted by MacRAND
As a long time Mac user, I love all the new product from G5s to 20" iMac to the G4 iBooks and PowerBooks.
But, 500,000 Macs over a quarter may be good for Mac, until you consider that Dell sells 100,000 units per DAY. I didn't believe it when I was told, so I went to their corporate web site, checked their disclosure to shareholders and... per DAY!
Current sales levels of Macs are not going to improve market share that much.
That's not why we buy a Mac, and another, and... It's ease of use, design, and feel. We are in love.
With the new G5 Macs likely due out Jan 6th, prices on the current crop should drop dramatically as soon as the new Macs are in plentiful supply and are shipping. Eager to buy? Just wait.

Well, your preception is skewed slightly. 500K is ONLY for G5's. That doesn't include the 200K iBooks for the quarter, 230K iMacs for the quarter 204K PowerBooks for the quarter 119K eMacs for the quarter - still not 100K a day, but gives you a better perception. Some of the figures I quoted don't include educational sales either.

Dell's profit margin is also MUCH lower than Apple's (they still make more money based on volume) but it's somewhere between 2%-7% - Apple's profit margins are between 22%-34%. The average Dell goes for >$1000 - The average Mac goes for >$2500

 

[visor]

Originally posted by ffakr
OTOH, it is a limitiation to ship a 'pro' machine that isn't capable of being configured with RAID as an option. It would be nice to have shipped with the option for 3 sata drives and support for RAID 0,1 or even 5.

Raid in a desktop? IN a desktop? I think you've looked at PC's to much recently. OK you can use a cheap raid controller and build a so called raid 0 or 1 with it. but thats not PRO at all. If you say raid, better mean one of those RAID racks with 5 HD's or more in them, extra cooled, noisy as hell and bound to be somewhere with aircondition and without ears around. a Raid sure as hell doesn't belong in a desktop. the less Drives, the less noise - that's what counts on desktops.

I also think that one optical drive is a limitation. Apple's current solutions for copying CDs is rather clunky. There should be an easy way to do disk to disk copies without paying the external drive premium. If Apple built in room for 3-4 drives stacked and two stacked removable drives, you could configure the system with a very fast CDR and a DVD-R. DVD-R drives are pretty slow when it comes to burning CDs.

Well, OK that may be a bit unnerving if you copy a lot of cd's.
I think I've copied my last cd sometime last year, possibly before that, so for me personally, I don't need a lot of Optical drives. fast network is important to me, and do get that from a mac.

 

[sethypoo]

I wish I could be in those ranks.....maybe when the PowerBook G5 comes out.

Here's hoping.

 

[Scottgfx]

Originally posted by ffakr
You do know that RAID 5 puts additional overhead as the data needs to be encoded to span multiple drives with redundancy.

It's a "be careful what you wish for" type of thing. Statistically, as you add more hard drives to a system, you increase the chance of a hardware failure. I have a two disk, striped Medea brand drive array. it's twice failed in three years, and I don't think I'm fixing this time. (it's only 50MB)

Can you imagine if they started putting 3 and 4 hard drives in a computer standard? Just think of how many more support calls would come in?

How about a RAID 5 made up of Toshiba 1.8" drives that would fit in a 5.25 bay.

 

[fixyourthinking]

Joke but I'll reply

Originally posted by Scottgfx
It's a "be careful what you wish for" type of thing. Statistically, as you add more hard drives to a system, you increase the chance of a hardware failure. I have a two disk, striped Medea brand drive array. it's twice failed in three years, and I don't think I'm fixing this time. (it's only 50MB)

Can you imagine if they started putting 3 and 4 hard drives in a computer standard? Just think of how many more support calls would come in?

How about a RAID 5 made up of Toshiba 1.8" drives that would fit in a 5.25 bay.

I'm sure you meant that as a joke but just in case, I'll reply.

The speed and reliability that one would gain with RAID would be lost to rotational speed and size/reliability of a 1.8" HD.

1.8" Rotaional speed = 3800RPM
3.5" Rotational speed up to 15000 RPM with majority at 7200 and 10K RPM

 

[Scottgfx]

Re: Joke but I'll reply

Originally posted by adzoox
I'm sure you meant that as a joke but just in case, I'll reply.

The speed and reliability that one would gain with RAID would be lost to rotational speed and size/reliability of a 1.8" HD.

1.8" Rotaional speed = 3800RPM
3.5" Rotational speed up to 15000 RPM with majority at 7200 and 10K RPM

Damn! There goes my presentation for the investors! That's it, we're moving to USB Flash key RAID.

 

[MacRAND]

Flash Memory RAID

Originally posted by Scottgfx
Damn! There goes my presentation for the investors!
That's it, we're moving to USB Flash key RAID.

Flash Memory that is large and fast does not yet exist outside R&D labs, but it is coming. So your idea of a "flash RAID", while premature, is actually visionary.

Reportedly, IBM dumped its billion dollar Hard Drive division earlier this year on Hitachi, participating in a partnership conversion period first, because the speed and size of "mechanical memory" has reached its theoretical limit and is no longer cost effective. Platters of Aluminum alloy and composite glass can rotate only so fast, heads can search over the surface of stacked platters only so much, and miniturization of the standard sized HD can be shrunk only so much before the physical boundaries of molecular structure resist further reduction. On 2D printed circuit boards, how can science reduce the size of something any further when the width of an inorganic (metal) electrical circuit is the smallest size of the material itself, a single atom or molecule?

So the challenge has been to make artificial memory (intelligence? like our brain) 3D (from a square to a cube), organic (like plant cells or bacteria that can record a digital signal) and non-mechanical ( because "moving" a something solid or liquid is slow compared to the speed of light).

What is flash memory, how is it made and of what, I have no clue. But I do know that the technology is in its infantcy compared to old man Hard Drive, and it or something derived from it or possibly parallel to it is the future.

In about 1983 a 15MB Hard Drive cost $15,000; or, $1,000 per meg.
Now in 2003 (20 years), an 80GB Hard Drive cost about $80; or $1.00 per gig.
Now, that's progress. Think of what the next 20 years will hold.

Rotational speed of platters has gone from maybe 1,500 rpm then to 7,200 rpm for FireWire drives, and 10,000 and 15,000 rpm for hot SCSI drives. But, today's miniaturizeded one-inch drives are much slower. Physical boundaries.

The point is - mechanical, inorganic hard drives as we know them will soon be replaced by non-mechanicl possibly organic memory chips with speed approaching a factor of the speed of light itself.

So, your "flash RAID", I believe to be prophetic. I can imagine very large, very fast flash memory the size of a stick of Wrigley's Double Mint gum, and a server RAID the size of a pack of gum.


Now, the question becomes, what kind of redundancy in your RAID do you want or need and why?

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

actually ibm has been working on a punch card type plastic film memory thats activated or rather open and closed by wether a hole has or has not been burned into this memory location. think of a self sealing hole that can be used over and over could replace harddrives with a solid state memory device that holds its memory even with power loss. wonder how the progress has been doing?

 

[ffakr]

Re: Flash Memory RAID

Originally posted by MacRAND

So, your "flash RAID", I believe to be prophetic. I can imagine very large, very fast flash memory the size of a stick of Wrigley's Double Mint gum, and a server RAID the size of a pack of gum.

You don't need raid for this. You can put ECC into the memory (error checking and correcting parity). RAID provides more speed [stiping, RAID 5 if configured properly] and/or redundancy [mirrored, RAID 5,10,20...] and/or data integrity [mirrored, raid 5...]

Solid state drives could provide integrity with ECC. It would provide speed via increased bandwidth data paths. The only think I think you'd need solid state RAID for would be for real redundancy.. where one solid state device would be dead yet the data would still be available.

I don't think we'll see this for a long time though. Right now, solid state memory degrades over time. That cool flash key fob will eventually have problems recording and retrieving data. They have to fundimentally change the technology of solid state memory to make it usefull enough for day in, day out use as a primary drive technology... though that day will come. Maybe 10 years from now, IMHO (till it's mainstream)
We'll probably see drive manufacturers pull a little bit more data density out of current drive tech. Maybe 400GB in the same form factor... but more importantly, we'll see what's now considered high capacity (160GB +) coming down in price in the near future.

... but I'm just a stupid Ffakr.