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#1 (**permalink**) 02-21-2008, 09:18 PM

Just for the hell of it I attached a £50 8GB SanDisk USB flash stick
to a Blade 1000 Solaris 10 Workstation.

(This device is ReadyBoost compatible and supposed to me optimised for
paging. SanDisk Micro Cruzer, part number SDCZ6-8192-E11 ).

I guess my tinkering may have paid off. Initially the device seems to
be *significantly* faster (3-5x) then the previous swap mechanism (a
single slice on a 146GB 10K SCSI drive).
Much more testing needs to be done, to accurately report the
performance; but so far it looks promising.

One little niggle though, is that this device does seem to struggle
beyond 4GB. I'm still investigating this -perhaps some 32bit PC design
hangover (?). Maybe a number of 4GB devices would be better.

Anyone out there with similar experiences -or could shed light on to
this 4GB barrier?

#2 (**permalink**) 02-22-2008, 09:16 AM

On 21 Feb, 11:05, Martin Pearce <martin.pea...@ieee.org> wrote:
> Just for the hell of it I attached a £50 8GB SanDisk USB flash stick
> to a Blade 1000 Solaris 10 Workstation.
>
> (This device is ReadyBoost compatible and supposed to me optimised for
> paging. SanDisk Micro Cruzer, part number SDCZ6-8192-E11 ).
>
> I guess my tinkering may have paid off. Initially the device seems to
> be *significantly* faster (3-5x) then the previous swap mechanism (a
> single slice on a 146GB 10K SCSI drive).
> Much more testing needs to be done, to accurately report the
> performance; but so far it looks promising.
>
> One little niggle though, is that this device does seem to struggle
> beyond 4GB. I'm still investigating this -perhaps some 32bit PC design
> hangover (?). Maybe a number of 4GB devices would be better.
>
> Anyone out there with similar experiences -or could shed light on to
> this 4GB barrier?

Yikes!! I was not measuring the external USB device properly.

Actual performance appears somewhat disappointing in comparison with
the original posting.
(maybe it's in the configuration of the device.).

There must be some way of getting (Sparc based) USB Flash paging to
work, as it works well on other platforms...

#3 (**permalink**) 02-22-2008, 02:39 PM

Well the Sun Blade 1000 is only USB 1.0 I believe.
Maybe a newer Sun that uses USB 2.0 would give better performance for a USB
swap device?

Trinean

#4 (**permalink**) 02-22-2008, 02:39 PM

On 2008-02-22, Trinean <trinean@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well the Sun Blade 1000 is only USB 1.0 I believe.
> Maybe a newer Sun that uses USB 2.0 would give better performance for a USB
> swap device?

Forgive my curiousity, but why on Earth would anyone want to do this?

--
"Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain
and presumptuous desire for a second one."
[email me at huge {at} huge (dot) org <dot> uk]

#5 (**permalink**) 02-22-2008, 04:47 PM

Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
> On 2008-02-22, Trinean <trinean@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Well the Sun Blade 1000 is only USB 1.0 I believe.
>> Maybe a newer Sun that uses USB 2.0 would give better performance for a USB
>> swap device?
>
> Forgive my curiousity, but why on Earth would anyone want to do this?

You have to admit- it is pretty funny.

#6 (**permalink**) 02-26-2008, 08:14 AM

On 22 Feb, 12:43, "Trinean" <trin...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well the Sun Blade 1000 is only USB 1.0 I believe.
> Maybe a newer Sun that uses USB 2.0 would give better performance for a USB
> swap device?
>
> Trinean

The SB1000 is a fine old workhorse and I utilise a USB-2 PCI Belkin
HUB, (and yes using the keyboard rated USB-1 ports would be a tad
slow).

#7 (**permalink**) 02-26-2008, 08:14 AM

Huge wrote:
> On 2008-02-22, Trinean <trinean@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Well the Sun Blade 1000 is only USB 1.0 I believe.
>> Maybe a newer Sun that uses USB 2.0 would give better performance for a USB
>> swap device?
>
> Forgive my curiousity, but why on Earth would anyone want to do this?
>
To post a crash dump to Sun?

--
Ian Collins.

#8 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 01:26 AM

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Martin Pearce
<martin.pearce@ieee.org>], who wrote in article <de30c7ce-2e9c-4928-9c28-dc0c4e7d989f@o77g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>:
> > I guess my tinkering may have paid off. Initially the device seems to
> > be *significantly* faster (3-5x) then the previous swap mechanism (a
> > single slice on a 146GB 10K SCSI drive).

One should reasonably expect about 50MB/sec throughput there, right?
(If it is on par with contemporary PATA drives...)

> Actual performance appears somewhat disappointing in comparison with
> the original posting.
> (maybe it's in the configuration of the device.).

You understand that USB sticks can be as low as 2MB/sec (as my 1GB one is)?

Yours is a little bit newer, but expecting much more than about
6MB/sec should be accompanied by a *specific* search for high-speed models.

Hope this helps,
Ilya

#9 (**permalink**) 02-27-2008, 11:19 AM

On 26 Feb, 22:23, Ilya Zakharevich <nospam-ab...@ilyaz.org> wrote:
> [A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
> Martin Pearce
> <martin.pea...@ieee.org>], who wrote in article <de30c7ce-2e9c-4928-9c28-dc0c4e7d9...@o77g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>:
>
> > > I guess my tinkering may have paid off. *Initially the device seems to
> > > be *significantly* faster (3-5x) then the previous swap mechanism (a
> > > single slice on a 146GB 10K SCSI drive).
>
> One should reasonably expect about 50MB/sec throughput there, right?
> (If it is on par with contemporary PATA drives...)
>
> > Actual performance appears somewhat disappointing in comparison with
> > the original posting.
> > (maybe it's in the configuration of the device.).
>
> You understand that USB sticks can be as low as 2MB/sec (as my 1GB one is)?
>
> Yours is a little bit newer, but expecting much more than about
> 6MB/sec should be accompanied by a *specific* search for high-speed models..
>
> Hope this helps,
> Ilya

Yes that would be consistent with my original view.

This was a bit of an experiment, as this particular model of USB flash
memory is advertised by SanDisk (in wintel circles) as being
ReadyBoost compatible. This technology I understand is supposed to
include device access-time enhancements for Paging (rather than pure
MB/s transfer speeds).

As this is a generic device, with no additional drivers required for
Solaris, I was interested in seeing if the technology could be levered
on to non-wintel platforms. I have yet to check thoroughly, but I
think there might be some activity in the Linux arena with this kit.

(as mentioned I'm using USB-2 on then SB1000)

Regards Martin

#10 (**permalink**) 02-29-2008, 01:56 AM

Martin Pearce wrote:
> Just for the hell of it I attached a £50 8GB SanDisk USB flash stick
> to a Blade 1000 Solaris 10 Workstation.
>

Flash devices have a limited number of write / erase cycles. Smoething
like 100000 ISTR. Let's hope you're not swapping too much as your flash
stick may knacker up pretty quick.

--
Chris

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Using USB Flash drive for swap