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To: J Fieb who wrote (3601)	7/11/2001 4:21:58 AM
From: Gus	Respond to of 4808

RE: Tape This is an interesting comparison of the relative speeds of the processor versus the different types of memories after setting processor speed at the baseline of 1 minute. While this is meant more to convey the I/O gaps than to be precise, I'm fairly certain that there are no violations of physics involved.<g> Device Speed Processor 1 minute On-chip cache memory 2 minutes On-board cache memory 10 minutes DRAM 100 minutes Disk Drive 1,000,000 minutes (1.902 years) Tape Drive 1,000,000,000 minutes (1,902 years) Tape is a sequential medium and the major I/O gap lies not in BACKUP but in RESTORE since the data has to go through the RAID controller which governs the redundancy scheme. That's why disk-based back-up is on the rise and tape keeps on getting pushed back to deeper and deeper archival roles. Note also the classic I/O bottleneck between the processor subsystem and disk-based storage. Server vendors keep on throwing MIPS at this problem while the likes of EMC and STK keep on adding intelligence to their disk-based and tape-based storage systems. As a result, the server vendors keep on falling behind and have to compete primarily on price.