The Future: RAID Available Everywhere?

A presentation made available to us contained this description. It makes NetCell's intentions for RAID XL clear.

Intel has already leaped ahead by integrating a RAID-enabled serial ATA controller into the Southbridge ICH5-R. In fact, there is a whole slew of applications that could benefit considerably from a faster hard-drive subsystem. This includes not only the processing of uncompressed audio or video data, but also massive applications that hardly work without a swap file or a number of modules that can be loaded as needed (Adobe Photoshop is one of these).

NetCell predicts that the next three years will see the need for high-performance systems for gamers and fans nearly double, along with enormous market potential for RAID applications. It is true that average file sizes are continuing to swell - just consider megapixel-size photos, video files and high quality sound files (who wants MP3s with only 128 kBit/s anymore?).

The gamers targeted, however, not only need performance, they also need a whole lot of memory. One CD is no longer enough for the new games - they now fill up at least one DVD. But even "serious" applications like Microsoft's Visual Studio are delivered today on a DVD, with a tendency toward more and more generous package contents.

With large hard drives like Maxtor's 300 GB model , the thirst for memory is easily quenched, but the desired top performance can't be achieved with just one hard drive.

And the issue of data security is just as ticklish as before, because no matter how much progress has been made over the past few years, not much has changed in this respect. Anyone who wants complete security must rely on either a simple RAID 1, a complicated RAID 5 or regular backups. The latter, however, are becoming increasingly problematic because of growing hard-drive capacities - 100 GB already require 22 DVDs.