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Samsung SSD Awesomeness

ssdawesome
Demos
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this demo3 months2009–2011 score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN passed it around in 2009 as a funny, impressive demo of SSD speed despite its marketing origin.

A Samsung-backed viral demo that builds a fast computer from 24 256GB MLC SSDs in a RAID 0 array and shows the throughput results.

“Samsung has a funny and impressive "viral" ad video showing 24 SSD drives in a RAID array.” (HN, 2009)

3 recommendations · 1 citations · Demos · partly dated

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@dryicerx May 2009 Recommends
on HN thread USB Floppy Disk Drive RAID
Good times... Also in the same light: Samsung SSD Raid (while we are at the RAID topic) [this video] (it's a Samsung backed video, but still awesome)
Samsung-backed SSD RAID demo, still awesome
@messel Oct 2009 Recommends
on HN thread Log-structured file systems: There's one in every SSD
Can a single post make you smarter? This was an awesome description of why log file systems match with SSD (as long as TRIM is part of the picture). It also covers how flash based memories work in practice (small reads, but block writes). Very fascinating stuff for a guy that only does simulations software, but was once super curious about electronics in junior lab physics (nand gates, opamps, feedback circuits). Great SSD video (the 24 raid 0 setup) [this video]
24-drive RAID 0 SSD setup demo

Citations, criticism and jokes

@rektide Jun 2011 Cites it
on HN thread Micron Demos PCIe RealSSD P320h, Achieves Over 3GB/s Of Sustained Throughput
Read more
Fuck yes. This isn't about GB/$. This is about IOPS/($ x density) and Throughput/($ x density). Databases and datastores used to be limited by iops, and SSD's are altering the balance of where that bottleneck occurs: we've already seen absurd 9x SSD systems[1] and 24x SSD systems[2] running off three or four SATA/SCSI cards; this offers those levels of performance in a single package. 3GBps is 24Gbps. A mere two of these will max out the IO Hub on a Nehalem, which is good for 40Gbps[3]. As for getting that data into the CPU, the top of the line MP Xeon offers four QPI links good for 25.6Gbps a piece. That's 100Gbps, which four of these could provide, and it stands as a fixed upper bound for how much data an SMP (4-way in this case) system can be fed (and thus crunch) at once (and uses expensive 4-way cpus to do it). The throughput limit is now (erm, will be) the platform, not the IO storage. This is huge. Wait, no, strike that, it's incomprehensibly small, small and fast. References: [1] "Battleship mtron" [link] [2] "Samsung SSD Awesomeness" [this video] [3] "Building a Single Box 100Gbps Router" via [link]
Example of a 24x SSD system

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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