Open hardware opportunity?

Posted Apr 9, 2009 12:19 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033)
Parent article: Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop, day 2

Is the "valuable intellectual property" being built into SDDs simply a load of firmware fixing to make the things usable by current and historical operating systems by pretending to be disks? Or is there stuff in there which really does require the sort of realtime or other intense attention that a general purpose operating system can't efficiently provide?

If the former, how about some hardware person designs a fully open PCIX board populated with a load of flash memory and appropriate (minimalist) interfaces? I'm not a hardware engineer, but I suspect that such a board might be quite a simple thing to design. Then implement all the code for using it as a storage device in linux drivers, kernel and filesystems. Could such a thing end up outperforming even the best SDD manufacturers' firmware? And might some genuinely key bit of intellectual property end up being invented here first, and GPLed?

OK I'm dreaming, now shoot me down.

Open hardware opportunity?

Posted Apr 10, 2009 18:48 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

how about some hardware person designs a fully open PCIX board populated with a load of flash memory and appropriate (minimalist) interfaces? ... Then implement all the code for using it as a storage device in linux drivers, kernel and filesystems.

I recently saw a list of four companies doing that. One I remember is FusionIO. (Not actually PCIX, though -- PCI Express (PCIe), which is probably what you meant). In addition to allowing more efficient use by the OS than SSDs, it's also cheaper -- less waste.

It's the best solution for many problems, but SSDs are going to be essential for a long, long time because they're easier to integrate into existing systems.

Open hardware opportunity?

Posted Apr 16, 2009 22:02 UTC (Thu) by wmf (guest, #33791) [Link]

If the former, how about some hardware person designs a fully open PCIX board populated with a load of flash memory and appropriate (minimalist) interfaces? I'm not a hardware engineer, but I suspect that such a board might be quite a simple thing to design.

The mass market doesn't want this, so it would be more expensive than a traditional SSD. It's a cool idea, though.