DRAMCloud – the next leap in the development of information systems
The specialists at Stanford University offered to create computers without hard drives. All the information they offer to keep in DRAM-memory, refusing also to all the existing solutions for the storage of files.
The university has created a project DRAMCloud, offering to use the memory of the set of servers to accelerate the normal information processes. However, hard drives, the project is still present, but only for storing backups. Completely abandon them will not work, since DRAM-memory loses all recorded information after a power failure. Yet the majority of operations will be carried out entirely in DRAM.
The project manager DRAMCloud, John Ousterhout, notes that the main impetus to the creation of computers that are running only on memory was a need to have systems which are giving the results of data with minimal latency in real time. Such solutions are in demand, for example, nuclear power plants, markets, and wherever there is a need in the most current information. DRAMCloud will operate entirely on silicon chips that provide access to data is 5-10 times faster than the SSD-drives and is 100-1000 times faster than hard drives. However, this solution has two significant drawbacks: high cost and inability to retain information after power off.
Developers, however, say that, given the specificity of tasks, DRAMCloud and should not be cheap. It is sufficient that its introduction was beneficial to the critical systems. Work on the project started in 2009, the latest version is published at the end of October this year. The latest version provides a solution DRAMCloud those involving thousands of servers and manages hundreds of terabytes of information, using its own software, a similar database in-memory. Defective components can be replaced without stopping the other nodes. In the minimum configuration DRAMCloud be able to serve about 1 million queries per second. Researchers say that you have already created a prototype system that uses the 80 servers and 24 GB of RAM each, and has a special operating system. The average delay at the request does not exceed 5 milliseconds. The final version of DRAMCloud, John Ousterhout as expected, will be approximately 6-12 months.