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Comment by bob1029

2 days ago

The latency of modern NVMe is what really blows my mind (as low as 20~30 uS). NVMe is about an order of magnitude quicker than SAS and SATA.

This is why I always recommend developers try using SQLite on top of NVMe storage. The performance is incredible. I don't think you would see query times anywhere near 20uS with a hosted SQL solution, even if it's on the same machine using named pipes or other IPC mechanism.

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bob1029

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MortyWaves  1 day ago

Meanwhile a job recently told me they are on IBM AS400 boxes “because Postgress and other sql databases can’t keep up with the number of transactions we have”… for a company that has a few thousand inserts per day…

Obviously not true that they’d overwhelm modern databases but feels like that place has had the same opinions since the 1960s.

Numerlor  2 days ago

Then there's optane that got ~10us with. The newest controllers and nand is inching closer with randoms but optane is still the most miraculous ssd tech that's normally obtainable

  • teaearlgraycold  2 days ago

    Eventually we'll have machines with unified memory+storage. You'll certainly have to take a bit of a performance hit in certain scenarios but also think about the load time improvements. If you store video game files in the same format they'd be needed at runtime you could be at the main menu in under a second.

    • bob1029  2 days ago

      At a minimum, we should be able to get everything to DRAM speeds. Beyond that you start to run into certain limitations. Achieving L1 latency is physically impossible if the storage element is more than a few inches away from the CPU.

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    • alpaca128  18 hours ago

      > you could be at the main menu in under a second

      That would be possible even on spinning harddrives as long as they're already spinning.

      The fastest memory can't prevent the real reason games take so long to the menu: company logos. The Xbox can already resume a closed game within a few seconds, loading a simple main menu is trivial in comparison.

    • inkyoto  1 day ago

      The separation into RAM and external storage (floppy disks, magnetic tapes, hard drives and later SSD etc) is the sole consequence of technology not being advanced enough at the time to store all of the data in memory.

      Virtual memory subsystems in operating systems of the last 40+ years pretty much do exactly that – they essentially emulate infinite RAM that spills over onto the external storage that backs it up.

      Prosumer grade laptops are already easily available, and in 2-3 years there will be ones with 256-512 Gb as well, so… it is not entirely incoceivable that in 10-20 years (maybe more, maybe less) the Optane style memory is going to make a comeback and laptops/desktops will come with just memory, and the separation into RAM and external storage will finally cease to exist.

      P.S. RAM has become so cheap and has reached such large capacity that the current generation of young engineers don't event know what a swap is, and why they might want to configure it.

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