Geek Chic: Google’s Culture of Efficiency
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Last week Google revealed to the world its shipping container modular data centers that I was the first to write about almost four years ago. I was invited to the event and expected to be there until the parking brake on my 34-foot Winnebago motor home let loose on a slight slope during my trip to California. Though I jumped in the way trying to stop with superhuman strength the half-mile-per-hour collision with a 2000 Ford Excursion SUV, the crunch happened anyway and I was a day late and about $4000 short getting to Google.
There’s not much about the container strategy that I didn’t already write years ago. They use standard shipping containers fill them with 1000+ homebuilt servers cooled with both water and air. As countless stories pointed out last week the servers are standardized with two CPUs, two hard drives, and a backup battery that negates the need for a UPS or even power conditioning as far as I can tell.
It’s nice to be right about this stuff and nicer still if my first report is acknowledged, as the Register did and most other web sites didn’t, but what the heck. The far more interesting part of this story for me is how much Google is into server- and power-efficiency.
This efficiency measuring and calculating is based in part on maximizing Google profitability, but it goes far beyond that to an almost cult status at the search giant. Where the rest of the world just says “throw more hardware at it,” Google works to optimize every level of hardware and software to the point of even making code run better and in less memory specifically to save machines.
The power of this optimization ethos at Google can’t be over-estimated. Code is optimized not just for performance but also to use less CPU to reduce power consumption and heat generation. Every data center that has a plan and a clue optimizes for code speed or size, but only Google (as far as I know) optimizes also for power and heat. Google server code might run a bit slower but used less average CPU (keeping the CPU idle more and reducing power consumption).
At Google EVERY optimization matters. A one percent performance improvement could save the company thousands of servers and hundreds of thousands of dollars. This really matters not just in company expenses, but in environmental impact, too. Google is that rare place where writing “green code” is really encouraged.
But this is a delicate balancing act. Writing faster code saves servers. Writing code that uses less memory saves servers. The bottom line is these things really matter at Google where “throwing more hardware at it,” is not a common technique.
EVERYTHING matters. There was even an infamous Google white paper comparing the reliability and efficiency of Western Digital and Seagate hard drives. Think about it: if you are buying half a million drives even a 1-2 percent efficiency difference comes down to a lot of money.
It is surprising, then, that I’ve never heard from Google an expression of interest in the Antek Metal Foil Drive (MFD) I’ve been helping to develop for the last couple years. Why worry about comparing WD and Seagate with their 1-2 percent efficiency differential when an Antek MFD of the same capacity relies on a much thinner disk and a much smaller motor to use 85 PERCENT less energy for identical performance?
Good question.
And there are good – or at least interesting – answers, too, that say plenty more about Google culture.
Google is very Do It Yourself. I’m surprised they haven’t built their own hard drives already. They have built other parts. But exactly for this reason Google would be skeptical of the Antek MFD. Even if the drive performance were verified they’d still have doubts about reliability.
Then there is the emotional component of a decision to even evaluate an Antek MFD. Like every other geeky company, Google thinks of itself as ruthlessly analytical yet is actually very emotional. Nerds hold positions often as not on what they BELIEVE as any other reason. They aren’t opposed to the scientific method, but aren’t above choosing not to use it if doing so makes them feel better.
That’s the way I believe Google is about the Antek MFD. Google is big and arrogant. Even more importantly, the gatekeeper in this area is Google VP Urs Hoelzle who doesn’t like me very much, even though I might just be the nicest guy in the world. Since I am associated with the Antek MFD and Urs doesn’t like me, Google has no interest in a clearly superior technology.
How geeky is that?
I always wanted to have the first comment post
You are pitiful. Go back to engadget
You replied to it. You’re equally pathetic.
.. and we all read the reply to the pathetic post and the pathetic reply… oh how pathetic we all must be
Am I wrong, or did I just read an infomercial?
Google isn’t interested in an unproven hard drive technology made by a company with a lapsed domain registration, and you think it’s all because of personal issues someone at Google has with you?
Get over yourself, Cringely.
the man (or woman) has a point.
So far, it smells like “vaporware” to me…
When we’re all using these harddrives to store episodes of Parrot Secrets: TV Edition streamed to us via Neokast, you’ll be sorry.
LOL!
One thing I agree with David Brooks about, is the importance of epistemological modesty. We don’t know what we don’t know. One way to be more certain that we do know what we need to know is by a long verifiable record, which your MFDs don’t have.
In a way, Google’s selection of hard drives, is similar to the approval process of the FDA. It takes a long time to get a track record for drug safety and efficacy that warrants approval, and even then they can’t be certain that there won’t be unforeseen consequences to the drug that show up after 30 years of use. If a drug has been used safely in another country for 100 years, that does more to speed up the approval process than any amount of amazing studies in rats or clever chemical modeling.
In other words, you get a reliable system by years of efficacy and buildup over legacy systems. You can be reasonably certain this is reliable regardless of your theoretical knowledge-base.
As what P said. There is also another reason why Google may not want Antek MFD in their servers and that is vendor lock in.
A problem created by Yahoo that hosts our website. It was down April 4-7. This has been corrected.
If Google is as efficiency-minded as you say, why wouldn’t they skip over platter-based disks entirely, and migrate quickly towards SSDs?
TimB, using SSDs for Google data centers would be outrageously expensive. Google has great speed requirements but has even greater disk space requirement. And good old hard disks are the masters when it comes to size.
Cost and Capacity.
SSD’s cost far more than standard disks, and have far less capacity per cubic inch.
Hmm, that pleading at the end made you look like someone shamelessly plugging their product. Plugging is fine, but saying Google is wrong for not using your product is just ridiculous. Have you published any reliability data? 86% efficiency isn’t going to do them any good if your drives break a lot more often than the other ones. It’s not just a matter of direct cost of replacement, they have to spend time replacing them too.
I’m sure Google, genius-playpen that it is, is by no means immune to NIH syndrome.
That said, maybe the big fanfare about these fantastic foil hard drives, followed by, what, three years of silence, didn’t help?
Well Urs has a beard and and looks like he gained the “Google 20″ (too much good cooking from the Grateful Dead’s chef…) So already my expectations of him are lowered.
That non-sequitur aside, I’m not sure that Google’s HD strategy has anything to do with personal grudges, though it wouldn’t surprise me either.
When will we hear more about these metal foil drives?
Interesting that the biggest complaint I hear about the G1 phone is the battery life (or lack there of). Maybe they need to put some of the server guys on Android development.
” if you are buying half a million drives ”
maybe Google don’t think Antek is in a position to feed that sort of demand.
So where is the “…infamous Google white paper comparing the reliability and efficiency of Western Digital and Seagate hard drives.” ??
Bob-
Why does Antek’s website URL go to a generic parking site?
http://antekperipherals.com
The link supplied by yourself and another poster goes to the company web site when I select it.
Bob, let’s here the story about your feud with Urs! And what is up with the foil drives? I realize these things take time, but it’s been mighty quiet.
Mr. Cringley,
I have a ton of respect for you, but you come off as very petty in your “geek-chic-google’s-culture-of-efficiency” article. I hope that you regret most of what you said in your closing, and plan some kind of correction. It does not reflect well on a professional such as yourself, especially with so many years of experience and hard won tech grit, to so blatantly shill a product you have invested in using insults and taunts. I will eagerly continue reading your blog in the hope that you return to your well-thought-out and insightful style I so admire.
With warm regards,
James from Las Vegas
Yes, what he said.
I’ve been folowing Cringely for years and years, and this is by far the worst column of his I’ve ever read.
Sorry to be a ditto man but same here. I think this post could have been written with a little more humility and a little less whine. What we know is only suprassed by that which we don’t know. I’m sure the lesson here has been learned, or maybe even relearned and will no doubt be learned again in the future. Maybe it was made after a long weekend, or some other manner of high stress has been taking it’s toll.
James has captured my feelings also (and I’m sorry that after over years of reading, my first comment is a negative one, but there you go. I guess that’s the nature of this particular medium.) What are we supposed to learn from this? I was with you up until you mentioned Antek. Perhaps you would be better using that gigantic brain of yours to analyse why Antek failed, rather than speculate over some personal difference between you and some guy at Google.
I know of no company of the size and success of Google who would allow the opinion of just one person, no matter how senior, to get in the way of a transformation of the type you suggest was possible with this MFD stuff. Anyway, as somebody else sort of suggests above, SSD is where it will be at, once the price point is right (Moore’s law is relentless).
However, Google’s power consumption problems are interesting, and I think you talked before about Google getting in to the AC utility business, I’d like to hear more about your take on that.
This is a blog — not something associated with PBS, so I don’t think Bob has to have his journalist hat for every column. My guess is he knew that this column comes off as a plug for his metal foil business and that the web site wasn’t working. This is prep work for his next column in which he’ll unveil some news about the MFD projects. It’s all along the “all publicity is good publicity” theory. I’m guessing a larger company acquired the MFD tech.
First the geographical questions: How was driving from GA? Where was the infamous attack by the Ford? And where was the Google event – in the Bay Area or at the Grand Coulee Dam?
And yes, how can we get the WD/Seagate HD paper? Talk about stoking curiosity!
With equally warm regards and a lot less judgement,
Fred
How can you get the paper?
By using Google, of course…
http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf
I have it of good authority that google is looking to use our spare memory areas of our brains as the next cloud computing storage medium… awesome.. we can start making money by leasing out our grossly unused Brain Power Generator.
Quit hocking your stuff or quit pretending to be a journalist.
I tried home-account because I trusted you and it has been a huge disappointment. I guess google is smarter than me.
Matt…your parents must be very disappointed. Cringley is a great journalist, while you just contribute to global warming.
this reply created on an Apple.
LOL!! Thanks John, for adding a bit of sanity there!!! (Created on an Apple here too!!)
When will we get to see an MFD in action? I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else yet. Also, I’d have thought that with your foresight Bob you’d be trying to sell them to the company that will replace Google!
Actually, I liked the shameless plug, and the reference to the Google feud. It felt personal, which is why Cringely’s such a good read. I guess Bob has always written what he felt like, rather than an editorial line. Now, freed from infoworld and PBS he can let loose his “inner grump” and dish the gossip. Sometimes an editor can help steer you, but to be truly creative you need to hear inner voices and not listen too hard to critics. So the more venal, spiteful, insulting and satirical the better. I’m finding I’m listening more to the audio recently – it’s like hearing Garrison Keillor. I for one am looking forward to sponsorship, and will be waiting to hear lines like “this show was brought to you by Fritz Electronics (“Where everything you need is on the Fritz”)”.
So when will Google build a phone that self-winds like a watch and a car that runs on wadded-up Yahoo! stock certificates?
Robert. Re-hire your editor(s). Please. I know of no faster way to become irrelevant on Das IntreTubes than to only write screed deeply filled with “I told you so”, “they hate me”, “I know better” and “I have a better product [unsubstantiated]“.
Evidently your editor(s) was/were quite adept at keeping your shoelaces tied and out of your mouth.
I loved your articles on PBS, but to say that the quality has gone downhill would be abusing even the Brits’ sense of understatement.
Mod parent up!
Very interesting article. I never thought about the necessity for Google to optimize everything, but it makes a lot of sense.
But Bob, like everybody else, I was disappointed about your assessment that Google doesn’t want to use your new type of disk just because they don’t like you.
New technologies don’t replace old technologies overnight because they never beat old technologies on all accounts. That’s why they need to start in a niche market.
Maybe your disk isn’t as reliable, or it doesn’t scale as much as hard disks. But please don’t tell me it has no drawback whatsoever compared to hard disks. Even SSDs do.
Perhaps if you’d travel in something besides a Winnebago with bad brakes, people would take you more seriously.
I looked up Antek Peripherals, and got a domain parking page. I Googled “Antek Peripherals” and “metal foil drives”, and almost all of the links are just links back to your earlier column or to other people who’ve blogged your column. It doesn’t look like an up and coming company or technology.
I am a long time Apple owner and a left wing Democrat, so I know a bit about conspiracy theories, wishful thinking, and continual disappointments. I am also a Google reject, so I can speak to that aspect too. Google interviewed me for a position and then decided it would be best if I never contacted them again,
I also know many people at Google — so called Friends who for some reason couldn’t seem to bother to get me a job there (they keep mumbling things about “qualifications”. Hmm! I bet no one at Google knows more about UUCP and setting up UUCP networks than me.) Anyway, choking back the bile, I also know a bit on how Google operates.
At Google, you get to spend time on pet projects, and it’s the way Google has gotten involved with about 90% of their non-search businesses. Someone’s pet project (voice recognition on the phone) grew into a Google business (GOOG-411). If metal foil drives were truly an up and coming technology, someone at Google would have bought a few dozen and tested them. Then, if that person found they were the next sliced bread, they would have evangelized to everybody and anything at Google. As more and more people became excited about the technology, Google would have purchased a hundred thousand units just to play with. Soon Google would base most of their storage on MFD no matter how much any particular person hates you at Google.
If Foil based drives were the future, they’re a decade too late. Back in 2000 when the iPod first came out, it came with a 5 Gigabyte hard drive. Now, every single iPod (except for the 256Gb Classic) comes with silicone storage. Apple is even shipping the MacBook Air with 128Gigabyte silicone storage. I expect that my hardware friends at Google aren’t looking into the possible future of metal foil drives because they’re spending too much time looking at the future of silicone based storage (or knowing my friends at Google, dilithium crystal based storage).
Many of us have a long history of poor technology investment decisions. If we were all investment gurus, I wouldn’t be waking up at 5AM every morning to get commute 3 hours each day by train to get to my job. I’d be running in California, running around with C-grade Hollywood actresses and ordering $1000 bottles of champaign — much to my wife’s chagrin. Instead, I just hope for a steady paycheck and be a faithful husband.
I’m sorry that Antek Technologies didn’t work out, but please don’t blame it on Google.
Now, every single iPod (except for the 256Gb Classic) comes with silicone storage.
Is the silicone added to make it waterproof?
Instead, I just hope for a steady paycheck and be a faithful husband.
Yikes, I couldn’t imagine working for someone else (work = slavery), nor coming home to the same old broad every night! That isn’t much of a life at all. Hope for something a little less ordinary…
It would be interesting if Google’s so-called “Culture of Efficiency” would extend to the underpinnings of the web itself. Rather than verbose HTML, JavaScript, images, etc. might we start to see a push for heavily compressed, binary-encoded (ASN.1, perhaps?) data with emphasis on local caching in its place?
With ISPs starting to adopt a tiered-pricing model, the bits you save may be your own…
Dave W summed it up perfectly.
Bob, you seemed more interested in getting credit for a four year old article, and convincing everyone Google is ignoring their internal DNA of doing things better/smarter because someone there hates you.
If I wanted to spent time with a self-absorbed person, I’d visit my mother-in-law. How about getting back to the type of article that made your PBS column so great.
I feel for David W. I really do, it is tough being closet genius
. But back to the point about Google efficiency, I had an interesting conversation over a few beers with an ex-googler (Gmail section) a while back. He explained to me the effort Google had gone to in order to make sure that their free storage space (i.e. with Gmail) was cheaper for them than Microsoft’s free storage space ( hotmail , I assume). I didn’t get it at first but then when I scaled the effort over millions of email accounts I suddenly realised just how much trouble Microsoft could be in if Google where taking this approach with everything.
….aaaaand right there, Bob turned from post-journalist into whiny blogger. That didn’t take long.
Couldn’t care less about the Google rejection – very interested, still, 3 years later, in the MFD. I’ve got at least three applications for it if it’s ever anything more than Cringelyware. Chop, chop…there are other markets available, son.
NB: SSDs are $2-5 per GB, standard HDDs are ~$0.15 per GB (probably cheaper by the time I hit Submit) at retail. I presume the lower range is the MFD target. Even doubling it is a no-brainer. Like I say, chop chop.
Performance and green computing links…
First, an interesting article by Bart Smaalders on how not to improve the performance of your applications. We have to keep reminding ourselves that at least some of the received wisdom of performance-oriented programming is no longer applicable on mod…
Ever since day one of search engines like Google I’ve been waiting for a boolean or exact match search to get rid of the 1,000’s of useless hits. Capitalization and punctuation are often necessary.
Have you tried putting your search in quotes? ie “search terms/phrase”
Gotta chock those wheels with a 4U HDD. =)
Self promotion and whining!
Using the metric of number of comments posted, this column was not Bob’s worst. How many of the complainers think that Bob probably writes his blog with the agitation-factor clearly in mind?
His job is to stir up the readership, not to write stuff that generates 57 syrupy-sweet comments back to him; I think he got over that several decades ago.
Anyhow, Bob, where in the product life-cycle are the drives? Contact me off-list if you need a beta-tester.
It is interesting when people chose to be against things. They spot something they don’t like, then use it to taint their opinion, and then miss the good that may be there. If Bob can help a few folks turn an interesting idea into a successful product — wouldn’t that be great!
Ignoring the hard disk project for a moment, lets look at the rest of this weeks column. I work with several data centers that host the computer systems of several big companies. It is interesting to look at the cost and energy used to do one unit of computer work. The work could be a number of processor operations or some amount of disk storage. If you charted the cost and energy used for that unit of work for the past 10-20 years, you’d notice both have been reduced a lot. Computing and storage is getting cheaper. So why do we have some many power and heat problems with computers and data centers these days?
Over the last 10 years I have noticed companies are today using many times more computing power and even more data storage. The cost and power savings from product have been totally consumed the the massive increase in computing services used. I don’t have good numbers, but I’d guess a typical company today is using 50 to 100 times the computing power they did 10 years ago. I doubt they are getting more than 50% (1/2 times) more work done than before. Why is this?
Modern computer software has become a huge processor and storage pig. Compared to application code from 10 years ago, today’s code is a lot more inefficient. Applications 10 years ago tended to be compiled and ran as native machine code. Applications today are interpretted and run via a runtime engine.
I applaud Google for looking seriously at every aspect of their system design for efficiency improvement opportunities. The data processing pods is quite innovative. The on board batteries is interesting. They have found a different way to accomplish the same thing, and maybe it is a better way. It is great they are looking at their code too. If they can get the IT industry to value fast, lean, efficient code, they will have done the world a great service. Quite frankly I thing IBM, Sun, and HP are delighted with the poor code. The new development tools create applications that need very big computer systems. The bigger the system, the more money IBM, Sun, and HP make. Google on the other had is developing a very low cost computing platform and maximizing its throughput.
Google is bring technical excellence back to the IT industry. I think that is the important lesson in Bob’s column this week.
1.)O.K. folks, first, Bob X. Cringely (aka go look it up on Wikipedia or Knol or Encarta, clickers) is no longer in the employ of PBS, thus has the freedom to promote himself, opine, whatever way he sees fit. If you feel betrayed, welcome to the world, my no longer so innocent bubble patrones.
2.)Google (with “me,too” Microsoft feebly attempting the same) is going take on Big Iron with a vengeance by selling or leasing these babies out.
3.)Bob, go over the roadblockheads at Google and present your case, insisting your “nemesis” be in the room to argue his case.
4.)Any opinion on how management at Sun just screwed its shareholders Jerry Yang-style?
Yeap, that is exactly what Sun’s board just did — screwed its shareholders (and employees, and customers) Jerry-Yang style. You nailed it Kevin.
Lets see, stock price has gone from $240+ to $6. If you take out the dot-com bubble and burst their stock price has been basically flat for 15 years, running in the range of $10 to $20. From a business point of view, this is horrible. It is one thing to have great products and technology, but if you are not growing the real world value of the company — you are messing up big time. It is amazing someone else hasn’t swooped in and bought them yet. No shareholder value, HELLO!!! Is there anyone awake (or alive) in Sun’s boardroom??? HELLO!!!
On the other hand take a look at IBM. Bob has written many columns on questionable business decisions. Can IBM really sustain its business long term doing what it is doing? Who knows? There is one thing for-sure. IBM HAS been watching its money and its shareholder value. During the recent economic collapse IBM has proven to be amazingly resilient. Look at what their stock price has done!!! They ARE managing their money WELL. They ARE returning shareholder value.
All companies, IBM and SUN included exist to make money. IBM currently has a grade of an A. Sun is looking at a C-.
If there were to be a merger…
IBM would have had some cultural challenges to make the acquisition/merger work. There are lessons to be learned from history (HP dumping VAX/VMS). The Sparc/Solaris product line would have to be embraced by IBM and allowed to grow and evolve for several more years. Both companies have great technology and when they combine resources both UNIX product lines would really flourish. But this will take time. They need to take very good care of their customers and installed base in the meantime. Not throw them out with the wash.
IBM will need to get serious about HIGH QUALITY Open Source. They could make a ton of money and change the market place if they would invest seriously in Open Office and ditch Symphony.
Sadly IBM should give MySQL to someone else. Based on the IBM vs SCO suit, IBM can not afford to risk tainting its database code by owning MySQL. Even if they seriously kept the database products separate, having MySQL would attract law suits.
Done right I think an IBM/Sun merger could be great for both companies, great for the computer industry, and great for the marketplace. Sadly SUN’s management has been spending too much time with Jerry Yang, and IBM may not have the vision to turn an acquisition of Sun into one of their best investments in decades.
Link to tour of the Goggle data center in Oregon’s Dalles, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwPSFpLX8I presented at the Google Efficient Data Centers Summit April 4, 2009
With respect to Bob’s analysis of Sun, we have been exchanging opinions on that for quite some time. Bob is not the only one who saves all his email:
From: “Robert X. Cringely”
To: “J. Peters”
CC:
Subject: Re: The Sunset
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 13:10:56 -0800
I’m happy to be beaten by you. It is funny you should mention
Display PostScript, because Sun’s implementation was actually a
homegrown violation of Adobe intellectual property. I remember
because at the time my wife (since deceased) was the product manager
for PostScript at Adobe and Sun was bugging the heck out of her. On
one hand they liked the validation of the approach, but they didn’t
like the lack of licnese revenue.
All the best,
Bob
>Bob, you have one again hit the nail on the head. The Sun and Sony
>hookup is plausible. They have been collaborators on prior work such
>as Display Postscript. Only Sun and Sony ever released products
>using this GUI. Sun’s version was OpenWindows which was the GUI on
>SunOS 4.x, their BSD stuff. Sun’s X11 offering did not come until
>they bought their System V license.
>
>BTW I beat you to the press on this one,
>http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl3050806720d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=82d21eec.0301271542.47633103%40posting.google.com
It is curious that the current Google groups gacks on this vintage post URL and search by author for myself is only goes back to 2001.
Pictures or travelogue of the Cringley cross country expedition would be cool. Hopefully you
dodged the blizzard through the plains during the week of March 25th.
Summit was April 1, 2009
Usenet post vintage 2003 with Bob links from PBS, http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.solaris/browse_thread/thread/4eb4246bff6aca6c/5da9c6d4266dfd19?lnk=gst&q=japeters+Sun#5da9c6d4266dfd19
I am one with the Goog again, http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.solaris/msg/679b6fda7c318b77
So if Google has this tremendous power savings, that is better for the environment.
Shouldn’t they be sharing this so as to spread this savings around the world?
They could maybe reduce power usage by 10% in California.
OK, well I got a site when I visited antekperipherals.com It’s live, and though small, gives plenty of info… Maybe it changed overnight? Maybe it’s only visible from the UK?!? Interesting stuff.
Am I alone in thinking Bob’s allowed to say what he likes here? It’s no-longer affiliated with a large company that I can spot. If it is a blog which happens to be written by one of the longest-serving, resilient and communicative commentators out there, that just makes it more interesting. Consider our modern world filled with blogs and bloggers all having their say! To emphasise this, has anyone actually stumbled across my Blogger pages? Probably not, I get no comments, but they’re there! Lost to the ether…
If anyone disbelieves that one person can so affect a company’s research decisions that a single product might be excluded, I’d like to suggest pondering Apple and it’s guiding hands…Oh, and Microsoft… Oh, and Oracle… et al.
As for the overall technology, I personally dislike this data-centre model. I understand a need for decentralised nodes like these to prevent terrorist damage to infrastructure. I understand the portability and power-consumption issues… I just don’t want to trust anyone else – especially someone I have to pay – to look after my data. Once you hand the keys of the safe to another party, you are no longer in charge of the safe! No matter what the spin is.
The environmental issues might be mitigated if we all kept our own data in low-power corporate basements on SSDs – or maybe MFDs – using back-up services where necessary. Going back 30-years? Maybe. But modern technology uses nowhere near as much power as it used to. And it’s harder to disrupt a million basements, than a thousand data-centres. I think we need to strengthen the overall network and invest in better optical bandwidth technologies to more places instead…
For what it’s worth…
))
I love the idea of the MFD drives. Where can I get one? How about five? They sound perfect for my laptops and home servers, that never get powered off. So far, the MFD drives look to be pure unobtainium. If I were a buyer (sourcerer?) I would look really hard at a technology with no installed base, no extant market, and no track record, especially if I wanted to get 10^6 units. Where is the manufacturing capacity? Is there a secret plant in China? Oblivia?
I am neither annoyed nor upset about the personal bit and talk of personality preventing adoption. The claim that it is personality and NIH that prevent adoption of the technology fails Hanlon’s Razor. (Never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, or ignorance.)
When Antek MFD has a real product, that can be purchased, please let us know. The site seems to be just a placeholder for white papers right now. (Though the founders of the company have some impressive achievements.) I do hope the technology works out! It just doesn’t seem to be a viable product at this point. Bulk manufacturing capability is a buggaboo for magnetic media, and always has been. Until that gets worked out, it is just so much wasted bits.
Cool video of the MFD:
http://www.antekperipherals.com/tmp/MFD_Drive.wmv
It would be great if If Tom’s Hardware would do an evaluation of a MFD. I wish Antek Peripherals would send them a few evaluation units.
Aha… Cringely…… foiled again.
On another thought, Never try to stop a rolling Winnie with your hands.
Throw yourself under the wheels. Like you did with this last column.
Those who whine about what Mr Cringely chooses to write about ought to get the money they paid to read the article back.
The real question I have after reading it is this:
Why haven’t any big hard drive makers licensed the technology? It is a hyper competitive industry, and the technology does not appear to be expensive to test, and might offer significant advantages.
Obviously it could be simply a NIH problem, but you’d think in such a competitive industry at least someone would give it a try.
I’d be most interested to hear Mr Cringely’s views on this.
It has been a struggle. HDD engineers will not entertain the concept of a disk that may be flexible. The VC industry will not invest in a technology with a market that is composed of five companies, namely STX, WDC, Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba. Google, Yahoo, NetApp etc expect their HDD suppliers to champion this technology and given the sophistication of the coating technology used in the hard disk today one needs access to certain expensive equipment to produce samples. But, as with any new idea we are believers in the solution and continue to move (slowly, given our resources) to try and perfect this technology.
Why are so many people offended by negative comments, here? Bob made the decision to permit comments on his writing. Are you assuming that he expected only praise?
I don’t believe that anyone is challenging Cringely’s “right” to post whatever he wants. OF COURSE it’s his web site. OF COURSE it’s free. He can post whatever self-pitying drivel he wants.
But don’t act shocked or confused when lots of people turn up to tell Cringely that what he’s written is self-pitying drivel. (For chrissakes, welcome to http://www.cringely.com; this is not a new thing around here. Go back and read comments on older columns.)
Am I mistaken or did I just read an infomercial?
I am fascinated with this report on efficiency. The future of competition will be based on efficiency. Thank you for your observations.
I would be surprised if Google wouldn’t jump to evaluate any technology that isn’t vapourware, even pre-market engineering test hardware. I suspect that the reason why Google isn’t using or considering Antek MFD’s is because like EEStor units, they are fantastical world changing technology that doesn’t actually exist.
How much did you blow on them Bob?
Bob, I must be in the minority here, because this post made me excited — if you are complaining about some company not interested in using your MFD products, it must mean that Antek Peripherals has some products ready to be tested out! And in real-world situations!
This is great news. I presume that your silence on this subject over the past few years has been required by the delicate negotiations with manufacturers, and now Google, in getting products out the door and into the market. So we can’t expect to hear much more from you about it until there is a ‘win’ of some sort — either some company testing them in the real world, or products being manufactured that could be bought and tried by us guinea pigs.
Hope it works out, it does SOUND good.
But I’m sorry to hear that Google hates you and that you’ve decided to burn all official bridges with them by publicly airing the dirty feud laundry.
I’m very happy for Google.
What about the rest of America?
http://measureofamerica.org