Re: RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20376 (FastTrak376)(rev02)
sarge netinst debian-pure64 <editor@postscript.port5.com> writes:
> So I wonder whether my raid chips are smart_raid or dumb_raid and
> whether they can save the CPU cycles or not while remaining error free.
Thats realy easy. If the chip works in non raid mode but not raid mode
then it is dumb. Real hardware raid is transparent.
> I expect the raid chips will actually improve in the future and wonder
> when they will arrive. Some of the older SCSI RAID controllers were
> probably fairly good and the newer SATA RAID controllers should have
> been introduced with at least that capability.
Why should they improve? There are better chips out there but they
cost more. The crappyness of the softraid chips is a choice dictaed by
money and that won't change.
> I am afraid I do have cheap junk instead and so md raid is still the
> best choice.
It makes less and less difference. Nowadays raid does ~5GB/s troughput
at full cpu speed. Since harddisks and, more importantly, the PCI bus
has less bandwith less cpu is used respectively.
As a sidenote: My software raid on the VIA chips is way faster, at the
cost of a little cpu, than a 3ware hardware raid because it connects
to the HT bus instead of PCI like the 3ware.
MfG
Goswin
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