bboard

Posted by CaptainJistuce
It actually occurs to me that shingled recording drives should benefit a lot from developments intended to help flash drives, as they have a simidar weakness(read small chunks, write big chunks).
...
Do shingled drives support trim?

Posted by CaptainJistuce
It actually occurs to me that shingled recording drives should benefit a lot from developments intended to help flash drives, as they have a simidar weakness(read small chunks, write big chunks).
...
Do shingled drives support trim?

Posted by tomman
Well, almost ordinary: the only hint you get from those that they're not normal drives is a bit on the ATA IDENTIFY structures claiming that those drives support TRIM. Wait, what?! "Butbutbut wasn't TRIM only for solid state cards!?" Not exactly. Due to physics being a bitch, on SMR drives write heads are wider than read heads, this is why write speeds can tank when drive is being filled, as your lone "write a bunch of sectors" operation has become a VERY EXPENSIVE "read a bunch of sectors, including some that are completely unrelated to the ones you're going to write, modify them on memory, then rewrite several tracks at a time". In other words: you've got a really crappy SSD with moving parts, and therefore in order to preserve performance, you must treat those as such - if you're using Windows 7+ or most modern Linux distros, you're set: enable TRIM (periodic is highly recommended over continuous), set your filesystem mount options to "noatime", and try to not do any heavy random write workloads on those drives (I can guess swap space and mailservers/databases are right out of the question).

tomman@himawari:~$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
        Model Number:       WDC WD10SPZX-11Z10T0                    
        Serial Number:      WD-WXA1AAXXXXXX
        Firmware Revision:  01.01A01
        Transport:          Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
Standards:
        Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x006d) 
        Supported: 10 9 8 7 6 5 
        Likely used: 10
Configuration:
        Logical         max     current
        cylinders       16383   0
        heads           16      0
        sectors/track   63      0
        --
        LBA    user addressable sectors:   268435455
        LBA48  user addressable sectors:  1953525168
        Logical  Sector size:                   512 bytes
        Physical Sector size:                  4096 bytes
        Logical Sector-0 offset:                  0 bytes
        device size with M = 1024*1024:      953869 MBytes
        device size with M = 1000*1000:     1000204 MBytes (1000 GB)
        cache/buffer size  = unknown
        Form Factor: 2.5 inch
        Nominal Media Rotation Rate: 5400
Capabilities:
        LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
        Queue depth: 32
        Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
        R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 16
        Advanced power management level: 254
        DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 
             Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
        PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
             Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
        Enabled Supported:
           *    SMART feature set
                Security Mode feature set
           *    Power Management feature set
           *    Write cache
           *    Look-ahead
           *    WRITE_BUFFER command
           *    READ_BUFFER command
           *    NOP cmd
           *    DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
           *    Advanced Power Management feature set
                Power-Up In Standby feature set
           *    SET_FEATURES required to spinup after power up
           *    48-bit Address feature set
           *    Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
           *    FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
           *    SMART error logging
           *    SMART self-test
           *    General Purpose Logging feature set
           *    64-bit World wide name
           *    IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
           *    {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
           *    Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
           *    Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
           *    Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
           *    Gen3 signaling speed (6.0Gb/s)
           *    Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
           *    Host-initiated interface power management
           *    Phy event counters
           *    Idle-Unload when NCQ is active
           *    NCQ priority information
           *    READ_LOG_DMA_EXT equivalent to READ_LOG_EXT
           *    DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
           *    Device-initiated interface power management
           *    Software settings preservation
           *    SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
           *    SCT Write Same (AC2)
           *    SCT Features Control (AC4)
           *    SCT Data Tables (AC5)
                unknown 206[12] (vendor specific)
                unknown 206[13] (vendor specific)
                unknown 206[14] (vendor specific)
           *    reserved 69[3]
           *    DOWNLOAD MICROCODE DMA command
           *    WRITE BUFFER DMA command
           *    READ BUFFER DMA command
           *    Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 10 blocks)
           *    Deterministic read data after TRIM
Security: 
        Master password revision code = 65534
                supported
        not     enabled
        not     locked
                frozen
        not     expired: security count
                supported: enhanced erase
        184min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 184min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 50014eexxxxxxxxx
        NAA             : 5
        IEEE OUI        : 0014ee
        Unique ID       : xxxxxxxxx
Checksum: correct

Using machine learning and pattern recognition in our system, the drive detects types of data so that we can coalesce similar data types together to maximize performance.

Data integrity — Because DMSMR drives put data down sequentially, track ECC (accumulation of parity information on a per-track basis) can be placed at the end of each data track. It enables the drive to correct up to 8K bytes of data per track during read, with near on-the-fly performance. This exceptions-handling capability is especially beneficial in event of shock, fan vibration, grown defects or other less-than-ideal operating environments. This development of data protection power during read comes naturally in a SMR architecture.

Data movement requires idle time — One of the most discussed about topics in DMSMR drives, is data movement. This is, by LBA Indirection nature, the other side of the same coin. To be able to move the data freely requires the drive to have idle time to perform these tasks in the background. Without the ability to preemptively maintain disk space, the drive, under specific conditions, may take longer to complete a command as its resources dwindle.

Posted by tomman
It's official now: the Mac is DEAD officially switching to ARM:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac-transition-to-apple-silicon/
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Apple-Going-In-House-Silicon

This now puts those longstanding rumors to rest: Intel is dead to Apple, and so are Real Computers for them too.
A matching macOS release has now been announced too ("Big Sur", WTF is with those silly codenames!?) with Rosetta 2 for limited x86 compatibility. Oh, and the convergence of macOS and iAppliancesOS is happening too, as those new Macs will natively run iDevices apps (so I guess those will be getting touchscreens out of the box?)

Kiss goodbye your very expensive creative tools and Steam games, Mac guys. Enjoy the ride while it lasts.

No word on the future of the Mac Pro.

Apple could have revived PowerPC (remember that they bought a PPC arch licensee years ago, PA Semi), but nope, they had to switch to cellphone CPUs :/ Today is a sad day for the future of personal computers, no matter what lies those ARM pundits want us to believe. Oh, this also kills Boot Camp and seriously threaten the future of bare metal Linux on Macs (for those that actually see Macs as "overpriced half-decent PCs" instead of "Think Different™") - Apple's "solution" to the latter is "you can always have VMs" instead of "wipe macOS and install Debian".

Posted by Nicholas Steel
If they wanted to distance themselves from Intel, wouldn't it be far simpler to just go with AMD?