SIE has begun to integrate Micron Crucial SSD or solid state hard drives into all its HPC solutions, especially for computing nodes.
These discs basically provide a great advantage on several levels:
- The write-read speed is in the order of 80.000-90.000 IOPS, which represents 10 times the speed of a conventional hard drive
- They are much more reliable than conventional disks as they do not have moving parts, in addition to being unaffected by vibrations, temperature or magnetic fields, often present in computer clusters.
- Consumption is proving to be a limiting factor in many operations. Conventional drives are in the consuming range of about 10-20 W per drive, versus less than 2 W for solid-state drives (and close to 0 W when idle). This multiplied by 20 or 30 nodes, a very common amount already in small clusters, represents significant savings
- Less consumption represents less heat dissipation, which is usually a common problem in the CPDs where the clusters are housed, and also less heating in the air tunnels that cool the processors.
