HPCwire: Moving Toward Software-Based RAID

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February 29, 2008

Moving Toward Software-Based RAID

Tapping into Fast Multicore CPUs for Performance & Flexibility

RAID is one of those core concepts of computer architecture that has achieved such a level of longevity and ubiquity that it's easy to take for granted. Like other mainstays of system design, such as cache memory and multiprocessing, a concept so fundamental surely is past its glory days of technological innovation, settling into a middle age of incremental improvement and cost reduction. However, with the breakneck pace at which servers are increasing their computational horsepower -- with multigigahertz, multicore processors now the norm -- some RAID designers are indeed finding new tricks to teach the old dog. A recent technology trend is so-called software-assisted RAID, with the goal of lower cost and potentially superior performance by utilizing unused processor cycles on multiprocessor servers.

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