Gigabyte's RAM drive card w/battery backup...

[Edward Ng]

"Unlike DRAM-based main memory, the iRam card doesn't lose data when the PC is switched off, said Thomas Chang, a product manager at Giga-byte. As long as the PC is plugged into a socket, a very small amount of current continues to run through some parts of the system, including the PCI slots. This provides enough power to make sure that no data is lost, he said.

If the PC is unplugged, the iRam has an on-board battery for emergency power that can last up to 12 hours, he said."

Sounds awesome, just what I was looking for.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/ ... ows_1.html

Thank you; that should answer a lot of questions.

-Ed

[nutball]

Yes, that does sound like they're using the dormant-state power in the Right Way(TM).

I would be tempted by one of these beasties, however once the dirt-cheap dollar price is converted to gold-plated pounds Sterling (complete with very fetching portait of Her Maj Liz 2.0) then they look less attractive. Going rate for old-style 1GB DIMMs on ebay.co.uk is £40-50, plus what... £40 for the board, is £200-250 (or $360-450). Not cheap.

[BobDog]

hey with a ram drive, what happens if the ram lose power by some psu/battery cock-up? it mean you have to setup OS again from some image, right? it would make me feel really weird thinking of my work there kindof electrically treading water. i suppose people would only use this to actually run the OS, and keep any/all 'keeping' information on network.

You guys, blablabla

ahem, those guys talking about BobDog's thing. but it's good of you to insult everyone's intelligence with the little ram/flash tutorial.
(or did you just mean to be pointing out how OT BobDog dragging the thread?)

I'm talking about anyone who thought the Gigabyte card would perform like BobDog's flash drive.

You think I'd go and insult anyone's intelligence? Oh I'd love to start shit up again with you; that'd be bloody fun. You think only unintelligent people would get confused by BobDog's reference to a flash drive when discussing the topic item? Then you're interpreting things in your favor, because I don't think so;--who's insulting whose intellience then? I felt the need to clarify that we are not talking about a flash drive, and I did not do it because I think anyone is unintelligent--do you?!? I did it because the discussion is about a RAM-based device and I wanted to make that clear. Or is it that you personally feel insulted by that? So it makes you feel like your intelligence has been insulted when I'm here to help things out? What the hell is your problem? Again you choose to pick at me for no appropriate reason whatsoever and you still have not been willing to answer me when I ask wtf is your problem. I cannot help you if you won't help me!

-Ed

Holy crap! It looks like I cause controversy everywhere I go around here... and that is not my intention! Ed wanted to show everyone a cool new product, I said “cool” but I though that something else (NOT RAM-based) would work better in certain situations--like my own--so I mentioned it... with no intention of causing confusion or anything else. Others, like lenny and wundi had some interesting and helpful observations—but I was not trying to hijack the thread or anything! Please, it’s not like we’re talking about audiophiles or PBS here, can’t we all just get along???

[Edward Ng]

can’t we all just get along???

I don't know; ask wim what the problem is that he has with me, maybe he'll actually tell you. It's been a long standing issue of some sort that he's had with me that he feels the need to randomly antagonize me, long before you showed up. Every time I ask him what drives his desire to be a pain my ass, he hasn't given me a clear answer.

-Ed

[nutball]

In a Silent PC Forum, everybody can hear you scream!

[frostedflakes]

Only thing I don't understand is... why use the PCI power pins? Is it really that much cheaper to build a PCI board vs. a power supply connector?

Well the PCI slots + rear bracket are a decent solution to actually mounting the thing in the case. It's a toss-up whether this is a better solution than something that more closely resembles a traditional 3.5"/5.25" drive I guess.

Could it be that it *does* use the +5Vsb line, whereas a more traditional Molex would supply this? That would be very useful ... I keep my machine in S3(STR) rather than switching off, if it could use +5Vsb then periods when my machine was sleeping wouldn't contribute to the 16 hour discharge of the battery.

I'm wondering if we'll see this technology become integrated into future Gigabyte motherboards, or whether it's just a fad that'll go away once everyone has transitioned to 64-bit machines and has 8/16GB of RAM installed by default.

What I would be really interested in seeing is a proprietary data transfer interface on Gigabyte motherboards that allows the user to completely bypass SATA. If Gigabyte were to implement an interface that was connected directly to the northbridge, for example, bottlenecks by currently disk interface standards could be greatly reduced or maybe even eliminated! Imagine the bandwidth potential. This would also be great incentive for enthusiasts to buy a Gigabyte board. It seems like a win-win situation for Gigabyte - they could sell more RAM cards and motherboards.

[Shining Arcanine]

But since the memory must always have power I commented that ECC memory would be good for this type of application, since without it you WILL be accumulating random bit errors over time.

You're right, ECC would be useful. What's even better is if the ASIC / microcontroller implements some sort of parity on the data. Somehow, for $50 (or $80 or even $100) I seriously doubt they'll implement it.

The HyperDrive III is supposed to implement ECC so that ECC memory isn't necessary.

In a Silent PC Forum, everybody can hear you scream!

A joke that makes sense online. I haven't heard one of those in a long time.

[Yoda]

I know I was a bit OT in my first post, and making things worse by taking the long path to explain why I'd need a PCI-E-to-PCI -adapter..

BUT, as the Gigabyte's thing seems more and more interesting (it even powers itself from the PCI-bus while the computer is off, hurrayh!) I'll ask this question, again:

1. Does anybody happen to know, are there any affordable PCI-E-to-PCI -adapters available?

I'd love to get rid of as many legacy devices and ports in my next mobo as possible. But this SDD looks like something I'll want. Actually, I might want a couple of them, in a RAID-0 setup. But I would feel really stupid in selecting the next mobo based on how many PCI-ports it has *just to power these things*...

2. Let me guess:
- there are no PCI-E-to-PCI adapters or
- they cost too much (over $50 would be too much, I think)
- so you'll say: "Buy a mobo with enough PCI-slots... (And please don't forget the 5 1/4" floppy drive, either!)"

Well, if I refuse to buy a mobo with all the legacy inheritance from the last millenium - can you think of any other ways to power these things, if there are not enough free PCI-slots available?

Wbr, Tatu

[nutball]

Honestly, in a world where 3.25" floppy drives still exist, you're hoping some hopes from Magic Hope Land that PCI will disappear in the next 20 minutes to be replaced by PCI-E. It took 5 years for ISA-free mobos to arrive after the establisment of thje PCI standard.

PCI + PCI-E mobos are here now, and will be for .. 3, 4, 5 years. More than the lifetime of a motherboard at least. It's not like PCI-E is actually mainstream and PCI is legacy right now (for example: what would a typical WinXP instal presume that you've got?).

Honestly, if you've got more than two other PCI cards besides this thing you're not really legacy free!

[sgtpokey]

The HyperDrive III is supposed to implement ECC so that ECC memory isn't necessary.

What a bizarre website (checking prices on it). I can't quite tell what the price is OR what it is you get for the price. Where did you hear about this thing??! And pretty sneaky throwing it into this thread!!!

So the hyperdrive 3 has 6 ram slots, can take ecc ram, and fits into a 5.25" bay with a pci banking slot to take power from the motherboard (plus a battery pack)?? Did I miss something and this has already been discussed before?

https://www.hyperos2002.com/07042003/purchase.htm

The company's website does not inspire confidence though... what do these folks specialize in?

EDITED:
adding a spcr forum thread where this HyperDrive III thing was first talked about. Funny how this thing didn't inspire hundreds of replies like this Gigabyte does!!

http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... hyperdrive

[sgtpokey]

Re: Hyperdrive III.

Ok, it hasn't generated excitement 'cause it's 399 pounds sterling. So I'll quickly move back to examining the gigabyte cheapo solution

[Yoda]

Nutball,

yes you're absolutely right, PCI cannot yet be called legacy, not even close. And floppies, I'm sure they will outlive me...

Yet, out of sheer interest, I'd still like to know are there any PCI-E-to-PCI- adapters out there? Is it even possible to do? Those could prove useful in some situations.

Before I heard of these SDDs, I was thinking that I could manage with one or two PCI-slots.The possibility of having perhaps 1-4 of these SDDs will increase the need for PCI-slots dramatically (Of course, at this moment the need is pure speculation, we don't yet know the pricing or other issues).

If they prove suitable, price- and performance wise, I would like to select a mobo that has room for these. But of course, there is a limit on how many slots the mobos have, and since the PCI-slots are used for only powering the SDDs, I would be interested in hearing any other ideas on how to power the things, if all the PCI-slots are populated already.

Wbr, Tatu

[lenny]

Yet, out of sheer interest, I'd still like to know are there any PCI-E-to-PCI- adapters out there? Is it even possible to do? Those could prove useful in some situations.

I have not come across any PCI Express to PCI adapter, but I've seen some PCI bus expansion boards. The closest I could find on google is this.

So now you have a legitimate reason to buy two P180s, both the silver and black one

This is, of course, overkill. I can't help wondering where you're going to attach the PCI slot even if a PCI Express to PCI adapter is available.

Since the only thing from the PCI bus that you need for this card is power, it should be easier to find an alternative way to provide power to it.

Edit : Improved your English much, you have.

[Yoda]

So now you have a legitimate reason to buy two P180s, both the silver and black one

That's what I am afraid...

This is, of course, overkill. I can't help wondering where you're going to attach the PCI slot even if a PCI Express to PCI adapter is available. Since the only thing from the PCI bus that you need for this card is power, it should be easier to find an alternative way to provide power to it.

Yes, unless both the adapter and the SDD-card are very low profile, they would not fit. And the expansion board you'd found looks huge (and expensive), so I think you are right, let's just forget the adapters for a while and focus on other solutions.

I was wondering, could the same current that powers the PCI-buses be found directly on the PSU, and be fed directly to the appropriate pins at the SDD-PCI-card?

Edit : Improved your English much, you have.

Well, thank you!

You know, once upon, in another galaxy far, far away, I met this guy called J.J.Binks. Somehow, he made me realize how important language skills could be... So annoying was he, that I simply couldn't control the dark side inside me while listening to him. Almost killed the damn creature, right there. As I should have...

[atomidude]

here's an intesting read about what PCI-e is capable of when hosting a ramdisk: http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview. ... erthread=y

[perplex]

but its only using PCI for power? not data transfer as that is with SATA? right?

[ptsWolfman]

My understanding of this "drive" is that the SATA portion of it is only there so that the BIOS and the OS "thinks" that it is a SATA hard drive. The PCI offers power AND data xfer for all operations. The battery backup is there because once a computer is shut off, no power is available to keep the information on the card (16hrs of battery life, rechargable when the computer is on).
This card has a special chip built onto it which tells the computer it is a "SATA drive", however, this is just a wording to the computer, if you will. This does not define the speed of the information.

Whatever speed DDR ram you use, it will downgrade itself to the fastest supported by the board. So if you wanted to buy PC3200 ram, fine, it will just be utilized as PC2100 (aka DDR200). Price for performance? Well, at $55 for 1GB of ram, I'd say this is going to make one hell of a product. Don't just think of this as "one drive". It could be your OS, or it could be used just for your favorite programs (specially the programs that utilize the Hard Drive a lot). For example, the game "Star Wars Galaxies", takes up approx 4GB of Hard Drive space and is VERY hard drive intensive. Utilizing this card should, in theory, make this (and again, any other HDD intensive programs) fly. Or buy multiple cards and have ONE for your OS and ONE for your programs.

[dan]

I wonder if the battery backup is only for when your computer isn't plugged in to the wall.....otherwise why would you bother having it in the form of a PCI card when it communicates via SATA?

that's how overclockers interprets that even when pc is off, there is enough power to pci slots

[Arcticfox]

My understanding of this "drive" is that the SATA portion of it is only there so that the BIOS and the OS "thinks" that it is a SATA hard drive. The PCI offers power AND data xfer for all operations. The battery backup is there because once a computer is shut off, no power is available to keep the information on the card (16hrs of battery life, rechargable when the computer is on).
This card has a special chip built onto it which tells the computer it is a "SATA drive", however, this is just a wording to the computer, if you will. This does not define the speed of the information.

Some of that is incorrect. The RAM disk definitely does use SATA for data transfer, not PCI. If it was transfering data through PCI it wouldn't need an SATA connector. A simple RAID card driver could trick the computer into thinking it was a bootable hard drive.

Also, it only runs off the battery when the computer is completely unplugged from all power sources. When a computer is turned off but still plugged in, the PCI slots get enough power to keep the RAM refreshed.

[lenny]

I was wondering, could the same current that powers the PCI-buses be found directly on the PSU, and be fed directly to the appropriate pins at the SDD-PCI-card?

You'd think finding the pinout for a PCI slot is straightforward. I'm unable to figure out which ones are the standby powers with 10 mins of googling. Found a few links that might be useful:

Power management for PCI cards
PCI pinout

From the two, it appears that PCI slot provides 5V, 3.3V, 12V, -12V, 5V SB and 3.3V SB. Of these, only 3.3V SB is not available from the power supply. Only Gigabyte knows which of these rails their card require.

You know, once upon, in another galaxy far, far away, I met this guy called J.J.Binks. Somehow, he made me realize how important language skills could be... So annoying was he, that I simply couldn't control the dark side inside me while listening to him. Almost killed the damn creature, right there. As I should have...

That would have been a great service to the Universe. I believe he's the one responsible for driving Anakin to the Dark Side.

Lucas outdid himself. I didn't think there could be anything more annoying than the Ewoks. I was wrong.

[lenny]

So if you wanted to buy PC3200 ram, fine, it will just be utilized as PC2100 (aka DDR200).

Hi, ptsWolfman. Welcome to SPCR Forums!

PC2100 is actually DDR266 since we're nitpicking DDR200 is PC1600.

Faster RAM should work at slower speeds. I did recall a few instances in the past where it didn't, but it might have been with SDRAM not DDR. I did have one stick of PC2700 that didn't quite work at PC2100 speed because the SPD says that at 266 MHz it supports CAS 2 (liar!). Not sure how smart (or dumb) this card is. With SATA as the bottleneck, Gigabyte should just drive all DRAM sticks regardless of SPD at 200 MHz, CAS 3, with really relaxed timings, and it'll still be way faster than the interface.

I really hope Gigabyte will provide more information soon. All this speculation is entertaining but not really getting us anywhere (unless someone here knows how to build a similar product )

[ToasterIQ2000]

I signed on to buy a HyperdriveIII back in January. I had to weasel out of that commitment for purely financial reasons .

I was receiving updates for a while though:

April 6th:

Dear Hyperdrive III Customers,

We have finally finished testing the HIII and we are starting the production run on Wednesday 6th April. Thanks again for bearing with us.

I enclose the IOMETER test results on the pre-production HIII boards and the same results for a SATA drive (MAXTOR DIAMONDMAX PLUS9, fluid dynamic bearing motors, 6Y120M0, 120GB, 7200 rpm, 8 MB cache) for comparison.

The HIII on the Motherboard (ASUS P800 3GHz P4) IDE controller managed an IOPS of 16,010 and an Average Seek Time of 124 microseconds or 0.124 milliseconds and a Sustained Data Transfer Rate of 90 MB per second.

The SATA drive on the Motherboard SATA controller managed an IOPS of 222.35 and an Average Seek Time of 9,000 microseconds or 9 milliseconds and a sustained Data Transfer Rate of 55 MB per second.

The ATA100 BUS is performing flawlessly, but we can only load 6 DDR sticks into the DIMM Sockets due to DDR control signal impedance and buffering. This is actually a DDR stick limitation not an HIII limitation.

So Revision A which goes into production on Wednesday can take 6 x 1GB DDR1 sticks. These sticks must be Registered ECC and must employ 8 bit wide memory chips. At present one can only get 1GB sticks or less in this configuration.

Samsung, Corsair, Kingston, Micron, Infineon all make such sticks (Crucial do not). We will supply you with the part numbers of all approved 1GB sticks for your convenience, next week.

As a result the HIII Revision A will only take 6GB of RAM. Please do not mix and match DDR1 sticks. Please ensure that all of the sticks are from the same Manufacturer (Be careful with Kingston, who badge other people's RAM!)

We will of course be doing a Revision B which will probably have 2 banks of 4 DIMMS and probably be able to take 4 bit wide and 8 bit wide DDR1 sticks and so can take advantage of the 4GB, 4 bit wide DDR1s now made. So we expect Revision B to be a 32GB device (8 x 4GB). But we have not finalised the design of Rev B as yet and really we are concentrating our efforts on Revision A for the time being. We may also be snapped up by a large corporation before then!

The thing is, the concept works as predicted, and the Revision A is the first Hyperdrive we have produced that totally outperforms the modern hard disk in every respect.

Thanks so much for your patience and your faith even! We are now ready to process your order. [ stuff about TIQ2k's finances omitted ]
Incidentally we are assured by Micron that the DDR1 market will persist at reasonable consumer prices until 2010.

Below are the IOMETER graphic results... [ oversized IOMETER Screen Pictures omitted by TIQ2k; SPCR could get fresh info on a production model, yes? ]

The striking thing about these results is that whereas the IOPS (Inputs and Outputs per second) go down as sustained transfer rate goes down with a HDD. The HIII IOPS go up enormously as sustained transfer rate goes down! The HIII absolutely kills a HDD in Webserver (5121 vs 92.93 IOPS) Fileserver (6303 vs 92.20 IOPS) and Online Transaction Processing (OLTP), (16010 vs 98.48 IOPS) where IOPS is King.

Incidentally the IOPS on the Promise TX2 controller, rather than on the motherboard IDE controller, for the HIII is 21,000 for the OLTP IOMETER model.

I have a further email from april 19th that has a little more info, updates, specs, from my perspective nothing particularly startling, and the following:

Disclaimer:
This e-mail is confidential ... copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited.

I trust I can quote that in this context ...

[lenny]

I signed on to buy a HyperdriveIII back in January. I had to weasel out of that commitment for purely financial reasons .

I'd say that's a smart decision.

Their web site has a review link.

Following that link, you get the message:

The review of the Hyper Drive 3 is on long term hold until such time as HyperOS Systems Ltd send me one to review.

So I think they should rename "VaporDrive III".

Besides, for £399 pounds I'd expect it to include 6 GB of memory!

[wim]

who was that fellow in the forums that had os operating on a ram drive with no hard disk? (has anyone here got a system like this, or am i remembering wrong?) i'd like to read it again.


to ed: whoah, look at all that boldface! i love you man, you're so reactive it's a hoot.
fwiw i got a pm from you once but i accidentally deleted [my whole mailbox ] by clicking the wrong link, i didn't get to read it. resend if you can salvage it!

[lenny]

who was that fellow in the forums that had os operating on a ram drive with no hard disk? (has anyone here got a system like this, or am i remembering wrong?) i'd like to read it again.

mb2 did it here for Win98, with a small hard disk (that you can replace with a CF card) that copies the zipped OS to the (software) ramdisk and continues starting Windows from there.

[|Romeo|]

My first reaction to the power issues was to supply the power through the battery connector, and place the card wherever convinient in the case rather than sacrifice a PCI slot just for power.

However, I think it would be wise to discover whether the charging circuit is on the card (I'm thinking this is unlikely) or in the battery pack before mucking around with that (Hope this makes sense, too early in the afternoon for truly coherent statements from me!)

[petreza]

My first reaction to the power issues was to supply the power through the battery connector, and place the card wherever convinient in the case rather than sacrifice a PCI slot just for power.

However, I think it would be wise to discover whether the charging circuit is on the card (I'm thinking this is unlikely) or in the battery pack before mucking around with that (Hope this makes sense, too early in the afternoon for truly coherent statements from me!)

Wow that's a great idea. Imagine 2-4 or more of these cards hooked to a car battery hooked to a car battery charger. ( If it is a 12V battery like I think I read somewhere) You could even put them outside the computer case and just run the SATA cables to a SATA RAID card inside your computer.

[StarfishChris]

They are nominally 12v. When you leave them connected to a charger they can go up to about 13.8v.

[mb2]

what i would like to see is a version for PCI-E x16

with many SLI motherboards* and a few coming out with onboard GFX, it would be nice to use one of them for this.. you could have almost PC4000 at full speed with no bottleneck! ..your entire drive could be loaded in almost one second! .. over 13x faster than Sata II

*personally i think SLI is going to stay pretty un-used in the state that it is, as single slot cards that beat the previous best SLI config seem to be coming out all the time, aswell as being v hot, noisy and expensive, and the fact that graphics cards seem to take an age to reduce in price.. anyway.. i would rather use a second slot for something like this (ramdrive).. if u have to set one to x16 and the other to x8, i'm sure the ramdrive would benefit far more from the extra bandwidth than the graphics cards.

edit: to answer about the PCI adaptor.. if it *is* possible then it would only work with 1/2 height, or 3/4 height at the best PCI cards.. dont forget it has to physically fit.
Albatron had a PCI-E>AGP adaptor at computex (at anandtech

not sure if the parallell/serial arguement is valid as u can get PATA/SATA adaptors?

[teknerd]

Addressing the previous questions about a PCI to PCI-E adapter:
Unfortunately they do not exist. One of the technologies is a paralell data structure while the other is serial and hence they are incompatible.