Jeff Wexler Posted October 24, 2012 Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 The new iMacs introduced today at the Apple Event are utilizing a dual drive system that they call Fusion Drive. Utilizing a conventional spinning hard drive and a Flash or Solid State Drive, computer performance is greatly enhanced. It should be noted, as the article below points out, this is not a simple caching system. The Mac OS is actually doing a lot of fairly sophisticated dynamic management of these two drives. Apple's New 'Fusion Drive' Not a Typical Hybrid Drive Tuesday October 23, 2012 7:25 pm PDT by Arnold Kim Amongst the many new products Apple introduced today, they also announced a new storage option called Fusion Drive. Apple's website describes how the drive works: With Fusion Drive in your iMac, disk-intensive tasks — from booting up to launching apps to importing photos — are faster and more efficient. That’s because frequently used items are kept at the ready on speedy flash storage, while infrequently accessed items go to the hard drive. The file transfers take place in the background, so you won’t even notice. Some thought the drive might be Apple's implementation of a Hybrid drive which uses SSD as a caching system, but it appears that Apple's system is distinct. The MacObserverdigs into some details and clarifies: To be clear, this is not a caching concept, at least not in the current use of the word. Cache would imply that the data on the SSD is duplicated, and it's not. If you have a 1TB mechanical drive paired with the 128GB SSD, you have a 1.12 TB storage platform. This truly is the fusion of all the space on two separate disks. Ars Technica compares it to an enterprise feature called Automated Tiered Storage. In a caching solution, like Intel's, files live on the hard disk drive and are temporarily mirrored to the SSD cache as needed. In an enterprise auto-tiering situation, and with Fusion Drive, the data is actually moved from one tier to another, rather than only being temporarily cached there. The Mac Observer reports that there are two separate drives that appear as one logical partition. As a result, if your Hard Drive fails, it could be replaced with a 3rd party drive and reconfigured as a Fusion Drive. Meanwhile, they note that all writes take place on the SSD drive, and are later moved to the mechanical drive if needed, resulting in faster initial writes. The Fusion will be available for the 27-inch iMac and new Mac mini models announced today. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OmahaAudio Posted October 24, 2012 Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 I'm still waiting for a non-volatile bubble memory that offers light weight, low cost plus incredibly high speed combined with archival permanence, but then I've been waiting for it for nearly 20 years now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnpaul215 Posted October 24, 2012 Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 I wonder how much more the Fusion drive will be. The store isn't letting me pretend to build myself a BTO iMac. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek H Posted October 24, 2012 Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 So I already have an iMac with an ssd and a mechanical 1TB drive. Can I turn it into a "fusion drive" or is this only for new Macs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted October 24, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 I'm pretty sure it is only for new Macs. In typical Apple fashion, it is not entirely clear what the OS is doing (beyond the obvious that it is doing a lot of thinking about how each drive is used) and whether there are any hardware considerations that would make previous dual drive setups unable to become "fused" as one drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmgoodin Posted October 24, 2012 Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 I have been using the Seagate Momentus XT drives in my laptops for a couple of years. They are hybrid drives with a similar function to what Apple is promoting. The Apple drives have more Flash Ram than the Momentus, but I think the speedup where it counts in booting and loading your most used programs will be about the same as a standard hybrid. The 500 GB Momentus XTs are under $80 on NewEgg and can serve to speed up any laptop with eSata drives. The 750GB drives are about $119. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted October 24, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 I have been using the Seagate Momentus XT drives in my laptops for a couple of years. They are hybrid drives with a similar function to what Apple is promoting. I am well aware that Apple will portray this as something special that only Apple can do, and I do know lots of people that have two drives, one solid state and one conventional spinning hard drive (with often the SSD serving as the OS boot drive), but do you think that what Apple is doing in terms of managing the actual use of these two drives is unique? With your setup, Courtney, what part of the OS (Windows) is keeping track of your usage and managing what drive or combination of the two drives is being used and for what data, purpose or activity? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccsnd Posted October 24, 2012 Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 Meh, my drives have been in RAID for years. Welcome to the now Apple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted October 24, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 Meh, my drives have been in RAID for years. Welcome to the now Apple. You obviously did not read in any detail what the Fusion drive is. It is NOT a RAID array in any way and is not conceived or configured to serve the purposes of any of the common RAID levels or configurations. From Wikipedia: "RAID is now used as an umbrella term for computer data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple physical drives". This is NOT what the Fusion drive setup does. The only thing the Fusion drive has in common with a RAID is that it uses multiple drives, and even that is a stretch. Again, from Wikipedia, the definition of RAID: "RAID stands for redundant array of independent disks". The two disks that form the Fusion drive are not a "redundant array" since they each will be purposed, dynamically based on certain usage patterns, and are not going to be holding redundant data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Feeley Posted October 24, 2012 Report Share Posted October 24, 2012 This looks to be a good rundown of how Apple's Fusion Drive works: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6406/understanding-apples-fusion-drive Two key graphs: ===== With Fusion Drive enabled, Apple creates a 4GB write buffer on the NAND itself. Any writes that come in to the array hit this 4GB buffer first, which acts as sort of a write cache. Any additional writes cause the buffer to spill over to the hard disk. The idea here is that hopefully 4GB will be enough to accommodate any small file random writes which could otherwise significantly bog down performance. Having those writes buffer in NAND helps deliver SSD-like performance for light use workloads. That 4GB write buffer is the only cache-like component to Apple's Fusion Drive. Everything else works as an OS directed pinning algorithm instead of an SSD cache. In other words, Mountain Lion will physically move frequently used files, data and entire applications to the 128GB of NAND Flash storage and move less frequently used items to the hard disk. The moves aren't committed until the copy is complete (meaning if you pull the plug on your machine while Fusion Drive is moving files around you shouldn't lose any data). After the copy is complete, the original is deleted and free space recovered. ===== But read the rest of the article; it's not that long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Is this kind of a kludge until storage gets faster, or something actually new and significant? philp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundslikejustin Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Is this kind of a kludge until storage gets faster, or something actually new and significant? philp It's an expansion/alteration of current technology and thinking. Nothing really different from having a separate SSD boot/most commonly used files drive and a normal storage drive, other than now the OS makes the decision on what goes where instead of you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Feeley Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Is this kind of a kludge until storage gets faster, or something actually new and significant? I'd guess this is just a bridge until spinning media goes away and everything's SSD. Let's say that'll happen within 24 months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmgoodin Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Once again Apple copies Microsoft. Microsoft came up with this same technology several years ago in Vista called "ReadyBoost' It is built into all Versions of Windows since Vista. It uses any source of flash memory (USB2 drives SD cards CF cards etc) to hold most used programs and boot sectors. Speeds up Windows Quite a bit. Read more Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Wielage Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 In this case, Courtney and Jim are right: hybrid RAM/hard drives have been around for a couple of years now. Apple has merely refined it and just pushed it a little bit further. To me, it's just a stop-gap technique until RAM prices come down and we can have 100% RAM drives that can affordably go to several Terabytes. Over a year ago, Intel called it Smart Response Technology (aka a "caching mechanism"): http://en.wikipedia....onse_Technology Having said that, this is not the first time that Apple took the core of a basic idea developed by somebody else, then made it work seamlessly and far better than anybody else. I think it is a step forward, and it definitely does make the computer "feel" like it's running a lot faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundslikejustin Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 I think it is a step forward, and it definitely does make the computer "feel" like it's running a lot faster. No doubt about it. Recently installed a SSD boot drive into my 08 Mac Pro. Boot times cut from ~1.5mins to 22sec. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted October 25, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Once again Apple copies Microsoft. Microsoft came up with this same technology several years ago in Vista called "ReadyBoost' It is built into all Versions of Windows since Vista. Good to know... that's why I asked you Courtney. It's not going to make me start using Windows, that's for sure, and Apple using some technology that Microsoft utilized in all versions of Windows since Vista will just further propel the sales of Apple computers running OS X. If "ReadyBoost" was so good why is the Mac the No. 1 selling desktop computer in the US this year? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VASI Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Zaxcom with names.. Million ages front. "Fusion"... Tssss Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnpaul215 Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 I watched the presentation and this sounds really interesting. We'll have to wait for real world testing, which might be hard to do if there is no way to really know what the OS is doing. It looks like the Fusion Drive is only in the iMac, but the non-Retina MBP is either flash or traditional spinning HDD. For people that don't want to read the linked details, the computer ships with the OS and installed apps on the flash portion. Over time if OS X sees that you are using ProTools a lot and never using iMovie, it will move ProTools to the flash portion, and iMovie to the spinning disc HD. The Fusion shows up as a single volume. I don't know what the other hybrids show up as, one or two partitions? This is pretty definitely a bridge to iMacs with full SSD, but there are a LOT of people using iMacs for editing video footage these days. Apple has been shipping SSD laptops (and the Mini?) for a while, so this is to provide a lot of internal storage without breaking the bank. It makes more sense than having two drives and having to manually manage it. If you are a writer, you probably don't need to keep text documents on the flash drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OmahaAudio Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Once again Apple copies Microsoft. Microsoft came up with this same technology several years ago in Vista called "ReadyBoost' Two important points in Fusion's favor: 1) "ReadyBoost" is such a lame name whereas "Fusion" is super cool. 2) In order to use ReadyBoost you have to use Windows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victor Rubilar Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) or MEMRISTOR are now ready for production, but it has been delayed to the end of 2013 for comercial reasons. They have 20 times more record-erase cicles capacity (longer life) and 100 times the write-read speed of the NAND FLASH memories, and consumes less power. I supose SSDs are allmost obsolete, and maybe DDR RAM is also. http://news.softpedia.com/news/HP-and-SK-Hynix-Will-Begin-Selling-ReRAM-in-2013-295386.shtml Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JackHenry Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 The other thing about the new iMac is that it doesn't have an optical drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnpaul215 Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 The other thing about the new iMac is that it doesn't have an optical drive. Does that matter anymore? Obviously you know what you need, but optical media is on the way out. I bought a Mac Mini last year and got the USB Superdrive with it. It really took me almost a year to unwrap the Superdrive, and I did it to rip a CD a band gave me. In a way I would think some people would miss it more in a laptop if they watch DVDs while traveling, but I never do that. If anything I watch streaming movies. I am far more likely to read a book on an airplane or in a hotel. I bought a bunch of cheap flash drives in case I ever really need to hand off recordings and there is no shuttle drive. If I am getting a proper day rate and kit fee, I can include a $2 flash drive in the package, or offer to Dropbox it. I'm talking about simple interview jobs. Doc/reality jobs are generally more prepared for these things, and the audio could be 30GB from those. If I give them a flash drive, I am invoicing for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OmahaAudio Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 JackHenry, on 25 October 2012 - 03:02 PM, said: The other thing about the new iMac is that it doesn't have an optical drive. Does that matter anymore? Yup. Back-up to a more-permanent-than-a-hard-drive-but-not-good-enough-for prime-time-yet media. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnpaul215 Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Really? I don't trust CD-R and DVD-R that much. I've seen way too many of them fall apart after 5 years or so. If I burn a DVD-R, I assume it's just a delivery method. I don't use them to archive anymore. They also don't hold that much data considering how cheap HDDs are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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