Very interesting news.

On the comment about power consumption... I wonder where the real gains are: power consumption per server, OR, power consumption per "search". I would imagine that with SDD, the same server could process double or more transactions per second, meaning fewer servers needed, in addition to lower power per server. (or as it is in the real world, you never need fewer servers... but you can add new services to existing servers... to get great performance out of a discrete investment).

Anyone got access to some good benchmarks about typical "search/index" SERVER performance on SDD?

i was thinking this the other day, that companies like google would be the first to mass-order these beasts and get the prices down for the rest of us.

They spent a shiteload of money on electricity and cooling (imagine the heat of a thousand hard drives) so despite the lower capacity, these WOULD save them a lot of money over time.

Yes, but how much money will they actually save? If a 160GB SSD drive is $4,000 (+/-), and even if they get a discount from the companies that is still a boat load of money. Especially with the capacity needed by google. Google can afford it, but I don't see a gain here...but it will drive down the prices.

the gain is the heat. seriously, their electricity costs would at least be tripled just by having to COOL the damn things. If they swap the most heavily used drives over with SSD's. it could really, really lower their power usage.

Lemonade soda posted around the same time i did but he makes teh same point - the faster access times mean that the searches/workload are completed faster, meaning that these drives would save time as well. less time in use, is less power as well. Its a compound effect.

True it will drive down heat from their servers and what not...power consumption may be less, but I just don't see the point as SSD's, right now, are slower at data transfer then current HDD's. Sure access time is faster, but data transfer sucks. And with an already slow infrastructure, won't this slow it down even more?

paybackdamanTrue it will drive down heat from their servers and what not...power consumption may be less, but I just don't see the point as SSD's, right now, are slower at data transfer then current HDD's. Sure access time is faster, but data transfer sucks. And with an already slow infrastructure, won't this slow it down even more?

no, no they arent slower. there are two kinds of SSD's on the market, the new ones are fast as heck and manage 100MB/s+

Many people who get SSD's are testing the older, cheaper ones, those are the ones stuck at ~ 30MB/s (such as the SSD drives in the macbook air and its various counterparts)