Can DRAM replace hard drives and SSDs? RAMCloud creators say yes

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The idea of replacing hard disk drives with flash memory has been gaining steam in the IT industry. But a research group at Stanford University is going even further: they say the goal should be to replace hard disks with DRAM.

via Can DRAM replace hard drives and SSDs? RAMCloud creators say yes.

This seems to violate the KISS principle.  The comments in the above article are also interesting.  RAM disks have been around since early DOS days.

Fencing and Stonith

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Fencing is a very important concept in computer clusters for HA (High Availability). Unfortunately, given that fencing does not offer a visible service to users, it is often neglected.

Fencing may be defined as a method to bring an HA cluster to a known state. But, what is a “cluster state” after all? To answer that question we have to see what is in the cluster.

via Fencing and Stonith.

STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head)

Stonith is our fencing implementation. It provides the node level fencing.

Gotta love how they come up with those acronyms.  🙂

Japan Reclaims Top Ranking on Latest TOP500 List of World’s Supercomputers

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The New Number One

The K Computer, built by Fujitsu, currently combines 68544 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs, each with eight cores, for a total of 548,352 cores—almost twice as many as any other system in the TOP500. The K Computer is also more powerful than the next five systems on the list combined.

via Japan Reclaims Top Ranking on Latest TOP500 List of World’s Supercomputers | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites.

Here is another article about this.

Protecting the pre-OS environment with UEFI

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Quick summary

  • UEFI allows firmware to implement a security policy
  • Secure boot is a UEFI protocol not a Windows 8 feature
  • UEFI secure boot is part of Windows 8 secured boot architecture
  • Windows 8 utilizes secure boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is secure
  • Secure boot doesn’t “lock out” operating system loaders, but is a policy that allows firmware to validate authenticity of components
  • OEMs have the ability to customize their firmware to meet the needs of their customers by customizing the level of certificate and policy management on their platform
  • Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows

Via Protecting the pre-OS environment with UEFI – Building Windows 8 – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

Copyright Law Can Meet the Needs of Software Developers

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Around 2001, DataTreasury ran out of money and had to lay off most of its staff. For most startups, that would have been the end of the story. But DataTreasury had an ace in the hole: a portfolio of broad patents. One of them covered the concept of attaching a scanner (an “imaging subsystem for capturing the documents”) to a server (a “central data processing subsystem”) via a “communication network.”

It’s hard to see how anyone could build a digital check-clearing system without infringing this patent.

via Patently Absurd – Copyright Law Can Meet the Needs of Software Developers | Timothy B. Lee | Cato Institute: Commentary.