Google and Its Alleged SSD Innovations
October 18, 2010
I have shifted my attention from Google to Facebook. Nevertheless, my full scale Overflight continues to spit out information from open sources about Google. (This Overflight link shows a handful of features in the commercial version.) I wanted to capture what may be old news to my two or three readers in this blog post. As I shift from the uninteresting world of brute force indexing to more easily manipulated world of social search, some technical innovations at Google remain interesting in a general way.
You will need to navigate to the USPTO, click Search, and then download these documents. I am not providing explicit links to the source documents due to the “free” nature of the blog.
The subject is the usefulness of solid state storage devices as a speed up and cost down method of dealing with the need to fetch and write data. Solid state devices or SSDs are a mixed blessing. There are some performance and failure benefits, but there is also flakiness, particularly with certain vendors’ products.
One example of an SSD for scale. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MicroSD.jpg
Google has been looking for many years – probably as early as 2003 – at ways to get around the hassle of spinning disc failures, heat generation, and size. As silicon fabs push to smaller traces, the cost and availability of SSDs becomes increasingly attractive.
My Overflight system lit up with a series of patent applications that featured inputs from a Googler by the name of Albert T. Borchers, more easily findable as “Al Borchers.” Don’t get too revved up looking for information. He like other post Alta Vista hires, is not a high profile type of guy in the Facebook sense of the word. With some poking around you can find some info like this bio at a conference site:
Al Borchers joined Google in 2004 in the Platforms group, developing system software for Google’s servers. In the last few years he has been working on high performance storage devices. He received a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science from the University of Minnesota in 1996, and has worked in industry for many years developing Unix and Linux device drivers and system software.
My Overflight system indicated that Google patent applications appeared in a bundle during the week of October 11, 2010. Here’s a run down of what I examined:
- US20100262738, Command and Interrupt Grouping for a Data Storage Device
- US20100262740, Multiple Command Queues Having Separate Interrupts
- US20100262757, Data Storage Device [not a duplicate of US20100262758, USUS20100262767 or US20100262759]
- US20100262758, Data Storage Device [not a duplicate of USUS20100262767 or US20100262759]
- US20100262759, Data Storage Device [not a duplicate of USUS20100262767]
- US20100262760, Command Processor for a Data Storage Device
- US20100262761, Partitioning a Flash Memory Data Storage Device
- US20100262762, Raid Configuration in a Flash Memory Data Storage Device
- US20100262766, Garbage Collection for Failure Prediction and Repartitioning
- US20100262767, Data Storage Device
- US20100262773, Data Striping in a Flash Memory Data Storage Device
- US20100262979, Circular Command Queues for Communication between a Host and a Data Storage Device
- US20100262894, Error Correction for a Data Storage Device
Busy lad, that Mr. Borchers fellow. Other Google inventors figure in these applications; for example, Andrew T. Swing.
Several observations:
- The Google is into SSD technology
- The pattern of clump applications indicates to me that Google has the technology in place and operating
- The “speed” push that I documented in this blog last year * before * Google itself beat the drum is enabled in part by a shift to next generation drive technology in various devices.
SSDs may be expensive, but when purchasing at Google scale, prices become more attractive. The good news is that Google’s approach to the market helps drive down prices and diffuse technology.
In this blog, I won’t tackle the obvious questions about how Google has worked around latency and data corruption. Hey, this is a free blog, and you just learned something about the way in which open source intel can shine a light inside the jaws of the Google. I won’t mention that one Microsoft person told me that patent applications don’t mean anything. Seems to me that this baker’s dozen of inventions is not the work of folks with nothing but time on their hands. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, October 18, 2010
Freebie, of course
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