Interesting article on SSD's with some relevance to OS's.

[rn...@pitt.edu]

I found an interesting article on SSD's in my daily readings, the
article does have some pertinence to OS's.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=1

The really interesting part is that they function somewhat similiarly
to Dram, in that if they try to write, but first need to clear a
"deleted" file, they'll read in the entire block, erase the block,
then rewrite the entire block, which is rather slow.

Another interesting part is found here.

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531&p=10

I'm assuming this is something XOmB should support? As I get further
into the drives it's something I'll have to account for, at least in
creating a stub, since the hardware isn't available yet. The bulk of
the work could be done now with the rest of the drive support, and
all that would need done later is the line to issue the command to the
SSD.

Warning: The article does go on at length about some things we
already know since it's aimed at less tech-savy people, but there is
good info in there on the topic of SSD's and OS's.

Ryan G