Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

[jonnyfive]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

Except that you are both wrong - SRT and Seagate hybrid drives are both CACHEing systems. Apple fusion drive is specifically not a caching system (with the exception of the first 4GB of contiguous writes at any given time which are "cached" to the SSD). Fusion drive is a software based tiered storage management system. In the Intel SRT and Seagate systems the NAND is transparent and used to duplicate commonly accessed data from the hard drive. In apple's system they are kept fully independent. They are presented to users as one large volume (HDD capacity + SDD capacity) and there is no data duplication at all. Rather it will simply move the more frequently accessed data to the SDD portion of the volume.

This method will be worlds faster than the seagate hybrid junk. And it should be notably faster in most workloads than the intel SRT caching system as long as Apple has written the code intelligently.
g\

Where are you getting this information about the devices being kept fully independent (no data duplication) or that the Total capacity = HDD capacity + SDD capacity? It appears fusion drive is presented as having only the capacity of the HDD, for example the new Mac Min config options ar the Apple Store offer 1TB HDD or 1 TB Fusion drive. It seems unlikely to me this would be a 750GB HDD and a 256GB SSD. It seems far more likely this config is a 128 SSD and a 1TB HDD and this is just Apple's support for Intel SRT. Moreover, having the disks independent as you speculate doubles the chance of catastrophic Storage Media failure, and for that reason, imo, it makes way more sense to use a caching paradigm. Also there is nothing about the noted KB article or the Description on the iMac page that rules out SRT and the keynote only seems to indicate Apple may somehow be pre-caching the entire boot image on the SDD:

From https://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446 :

Presented as a single volume on your Mac, Fusion Drive automatically and dynamically moves frequently used files to Flash storage for quicker access, while infrequently used items move to the hard disk. As a result you'll enjoy shorter startup times, and as the system learns how you work you'll see faster application launches and quicker file access. Fusion Drive manages all this automatically in the background.

From https://www.apple.com/imac/performance/

Available as a configurable option at the Apple Online Store, Fusion Drive is a breakthrough concept that combines the high storage capacity of a traditional hard drive with the high performance of flash storage. 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.

 

[genzai]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

. Moreover, having the disks independent as you speculate doubles the chance of catastrophic Storage Media failure, and for that reason, imo, it makes way more sense to use a caching paradigm.

It is not speculation. do some more research and read the anandtech article. Also since it has nothing to do with SRT it should be chipset independent, so thats cool for non Z series owners.

Also it is not a 750GB + 256GB setup. All current fusion drive setups are 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD or 128GB SSD + 3TB HDD. What you end up with on a "1TB Fusion Drive" is a 1.1TB Volume, and a 3.1TB volume for the 3TB version.
g\

 

[jonnyfive]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

It is not speculation. do some more research and read the anandtech article. Also since it has nothing to do with SRT it should be chipset independent, so thats cool for non Z series owners.

Cool thanks for the reference. Interestingly enough I searched for information on fusion drive on Anandtech yesterday via googles site: argument and that article was not turned up on the first page. Of course when i went to the site just now its the newest Storage article

 

[Fwiler]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

Except that you are both wrong - SRT and Seagate hybrid drives are both CACHEing systems. Apple fusion drive is specifically not a caching system (with the exception of the first 4GB of contiguous writes at any given time which are "cached" to the SSD). Fusion drive is a software based tiered storage management system. In the Intel SRT and Seagate systems the NAND is transparent and used to duplicate commonly accessed data from the hard drive. In apple's system they are kept fully independent. They are presented to users as one large volume (HDD capacity + SDD capacity) and there is no data duplication at all. Rather it will simply move the more frequently accessed data to the SDD portion of the volume.

This method will be worlds faster than the seagate hybrid junk. And it should be notably faster in most workloads than the intel SRT caching system as long as Apple has written the code intelligently.
g\

Intel's SRT is the exact same thing, except it leaves a copy for parity on the drive to be default. Intel's SRT is different in it's cache size. Instead of 4GB, you have a max of 64GB which is used to not only cache writes, but to cache frequently used files as well. If your hard drive is bigger you use the space how you want, instead of allowing the OS to decide for you.
Both are placing data on the fastest drive. Whether you call it caching or storage management, it basically is doing the same thing.

 

[genzai]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

Both are placing data on the fastest drive. Whether you call it caching or storage management, it basically is doing the same thing.

well not really. Data duplication is the main difference. but caching has its own upsides and downsides, vs a more standard single access system. Again i would point you to the nice anandtech write up as they make the differences pretty clear. Also while the basic principles between SRT and Fusion might be similar, caching aside, the differences grow from there. SRT is more flexible in how you set it up, is obviously currently windows only with an intel software layer, and is artificially limited to only a few chipsets. My guess is that most users will get a much better and certainly a simpler experience with fusion drive though it remains to be seen how easy it will be to set it up with non apple hardware. It is clear you can use a third party HDD to create a fusion drive but we will have to see if a hack will be needed to use a third party SSD.
g\

 

[kryz]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

I wonder if there's any way to use my own ssd and hdd in the iMac and put stuff where I want it to go.
I'm afraid the fusion thing could be counter productive when recording tracks and such.
Sadly my hackintosh seems to be shot, it started smoking the other day... So I might get myself the new iMac.

 

[richardtj]

stupidly fast and very nice. New weld technology to make them even thinner and the optical drive has gone...

 

[Chovav]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

I wonder if there is any way to know about IPS technology included? And touch or multi-touch screen?

 

[Torrijos]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

It is not speculation. do some more research and read the anandtech article. Also since it has nothing to do with SRT it should be chipset independent, so thats cool for non Z series owners.

Also it is not a 750GB + 256GB setup. All current fusion drive setups are 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD or 128GB SSD + 3TB HDD. What you end up with on a "1TB Fusion Drive" is a 1.1TB Volume, and a 3.1TB volume for the 3TB version.
g\

Actually the thing with SSD failure is that most failures still leave the reading capacity intact, so only the mechanical drive failure count as usual.

 

[guatemala]

Article: Apple's New iMacs Have Ivy Bridge Desktop CPUs

My IMAC