Areca 1880

[Nizzen]

I expect there could be a few quick updates from Areca, this being a new controller.

Looking forward to some benchmarks Computurd,

Nizzen is about to test a load of Intels

[eva2000]

woah 10x 160GB G2 = 1600GB nice

[Computurd]

Yes, I expect the areca line to mature, of course. And with its benefit of cache it might be the go-to card in the future.

having so many problems getting the ram it is ridiculous. The kingston ram they linked ( KVR800D2D8P6/4G ) is discontinued. NO ebay doesnt have it either

Had to call Unigen American office directly in order to find the other part that their tech support recommends (UG51T7200N8DR-8CC). it will cost 350 and have a 2-3 week lead time(have to ship from taiwan for christ sakes). I could also have a custom module made by memoryten manufacturer meeting the specifications for 250 usd with lead time of five days (but no guarantees on if it works there)...hmm.
any other ideas guys? seems they didnt have much planning in regards to this ram. the older ram runs at 667 and if i am going to buy ANY ram for this it will be 4gb and run at the max 800mhz. the 2gb sticks are everywhere, but that.

need some memory gurus to weigh in here....seriously im struggling!

the spec is:
512M x 72-bit 4GB (4096MB) DDR2-800 CL6 SDRAM
(Synchronous DRAM) "dual rank" Registered w/Parity memory module. The
components on
this module include eighteen 256M x 8-bit DDR2-800 SDRAM in FBGA packages.
This 240-
pin DIMM uses gold contact fingers and requires +1.8V

it MUST be x8 or x16... (18 IC only is what is making it hard to find a
replacement.)

my impatience is not making this easy...

[Biker]

Impatience is a virtue.... because we all need to see results!

4G stick of goodness here

Edit: Datasheet

[Computurd]

I have that stick on my desk, along with another stick of ram that is also supposedly compatible. neither are. they physically have to many IC even though it isnt listed that way.


12M x 72-bit 4GB (4096MB) DDR2-800 CL6 SDRAM
(Synchronous DRAM) "dual rank" Registered w/Parity memory module. The
components on
this module include eighteen 256M x 8-bitDDR2-800 SDRAM in FBGA packages.
This 240-
pin DIMM uses gold contact fingers and requires +1.8V

it MUST be x8 or x16... (18 IC only is what is making it hard to find a
replacement.)

[Biker]

I thought the extra chip (9 vs 8 or 18 vs 16) was the parity chip so the controller would only see 8 or 16 chips. The additional 1 or 2 parity chips should be invisible to it.

Have you tried this one? (18 chip).

[Computurd]

no it is that the linked chips (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139084) actually physically have 36 chips...even though they arent listed as such.

i will run this by the areca tech support, and let you know as soon as i receive a response! thanks!

EDIT: i think that the difference is this one is not 'registered with parity'...so i am not sure if it will work...

[Biker]

I can assure you the above linked part is an 4GB 18 chip DDR2-800 ECC CL6 stick

The extra 2 chips are the parity chips...

KVR800D2E6/4G

[Computurd]

Thank you biker, for your guidance with the ram, i have sent an email to areca about that stick, and will hopefully receive a reply back soon. it troubles me they would link an discontinued stick. hopefully this will help to remedy the situation...
with two failed attempts though i need to check better

Now, back to the show with some real results for once.
Kinda receiving some strange results here. Some of these 4k results seem a little to good to be true so i did some things to try to make them as accurate as possible..logged off and ran GC for a few hours...
*one worker
*4GB test file, four times larger than the cache
*turned off hdd read ahead
*turned off volume read ahead
*enabled write-thru cache to eliminate cache usage (even though it is for writes, just trying to take cache totally out of the equation.

Now, i ran this 4k profile with a 5second ramp, two minute run, mainly because that is how i ran my fastpath benches earlier.
a thing of note here: even though i shut off cache, and read ahead, on the QD1-3 the number would start low, then slowly climb over the course of the two minute run. for instance QD started at 30 then climbed steadily to its final result.
not sure why, with all the precautions taken to eliminate caching and read ahead. over those lower QD though, the mb/s would not stray more than 2 or 3 during the run for all other higher QD.

the LSI 9260-8i with FastPath is on the left, the Areca 1880IX-12 is on the right.




Some conclusions (wild speculations, etc, in italics ) regarding this....

unless my array is degrading faster than any array I have ever seen, as i only wrote one 4gb testfile, then ran the reads concurrently without stopping....or there is something strange going on here.
seems at the higher QD the controller hits a 'hole' of sorts at the higher QD.
there is a point of diminishing returns very quickly. I will let my drives GC overnight, then run the higher QD in the morning again to try to rule that possibility out of the equation. If the preliminary analysis holds true, then this is something that might be addressed in future firmware revisions, etc.

Now, would it need to be? the low QD is so superb, that for OS usage it looks to be ridiculously powerful! any high QD situations should be rare indeed, as with the latencies involved there would be resolved very very quickly. of course server use would suffer...but man the low QD is good.

I think this high QD 'hole' is what is leading to some less-than-spectacular results with the as ssd, CDM, etc. have ran some cursory PCMV with this array, and i am easily getting within 1k points of my highest, and that is with only 4.2 setting and none of my real tricks I am leveraging cache a bit, but hey.. once i get some ram i will go to battle stations

the difference in the low QD latency is astounding. I would love to see gullars compare that to the latencies involved with the 9260 for his QOS numbers...
going to load some games up, let the gc do its thing, and do some load testing in the AM. havent set it up yet in soft-raid, but dont really care to. i wouldnt use it for soft raid, ever. However, seeing some of mr nizzen's fantastic results i might do it. he has hit .05 latency when measured with everest in pass thru mode.
Some of my initial qualms have been allayed a bit...array seems to be working well, and these results are encouraging. also gonna do some 4k sequential and see what we get.
An unfortunate downside of the 9260-8i with fastpath is that it hurts write speeds tremendously, because you have to run write-thru. Even when i have made my best PCMV runs, i have to do it in write back with the 9260. it just penalizes too much for slow writes on the benchmark. FastPath does deliver a tremendous boost with write back enabled, but you do not see the true potential of the awesome reads, you still leave about 30 percent on the table with write back enabled.
early indications is this is not a flaw that the areca suffers. so has areca struck a middle ground here? or hit a home run? if you enable read ahead etc...the game changes a bit, so i will try to explore that a bit as well...the sequentials benefit tremendously more (with read ahead) than they do with the LSI, arecas read ahead algorithms are just flat out better imo.

[Nizzen]

Can you send med the 4k iometer testfile? Then I can compare with youre results

Looks like it is UG51T7200N8DR-8CC 4gb memory we have to rely on for now

On my Areca 1680ix I have Supertalent memory

[Anvil]

Interesting results Computurd

Quite a boost on the Areca up to QD16.

From ~QD24 upwards it resembles what I saw in Nizzens iometer test.
Your drives are capable of ~15-16K 4K read iops each and so in theory one should be able to pull 120-130.000 iops using 8 Vertex.

Looks like mine will be delivered early next week. (monday-tuesday)
Kind of worried about the heat situ, my setup is hardly audible atm, not looking for more noise.


@Nizzen

Just run the test manually, there is no single config script for those exact QDs.

[Wintel64]

When the BBU for ARC-1880 will become available?

[Computurd]

thinking of doing a soft raid with the 9260 and the 1880..would be interesting..

[Sandon]

When the BBU for ARC-1880 will become available?

Pretty much all areca cards use the same BBU. They look like this:



They are ARC-6120 and looking at the connector on the ARC-1880 in pictures I am sure it uses the same as well.

I cant find anything on their site that says this for sure but I would be amazed if it used something different.

[SteveRo]

newegg is showing the 24 and 16 port but not the 12 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-072-_-Product

[Computurd]

excellent find steve- wonder if they will have memory for it
i did find one retailer with the recommended 4gb module, for 420 bucks. ouch. went halfway and ordered a guaranteed compatible stick (kingston KVR800D2D8P6/2G) for 60 dollars. same brand, half the size, but seven times cheaper. unbelievable, i feel like im being price gouged, as they are impossible to find. so i wont do it. no ing way. i have ordered from unigen directly, and while the lead time is long, i am doing it on principle
so steve-o my man...you seem noticeably absent from the 1880 party, you gonna join?
my results are super late but RLS is hampering me...

@Biker, i have recieved a reply from areca on the stick you linked, they say it is no good as it isnt registered they are full of ideas on ram that WONT work, but none when it comes to ram that will work.

[Nitrobass24]

Not a memory expert but this looks like it would work.
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...N-CT51272AB80E

[Computurd]

unfortunately it is a 512 x 72 , and compatible ram has to be 256x8. I am not a memory expert either, but i have contacted several people who are (tech support at memory suppliers) and they say it is pretty much limited to one part, which is discontinued. Unigen is going to supply areca with the neccesary chips, but there is a bit of a wait for them to get to market (eta:unknown). I will just live with the 2gb, even though there are tons of 667mhz chips which would work i just really insist upon 800mhz! I am semi-content to wait...

[Computurd]

Interesting tid-bit...Much like the 92xx series this card isn't allowing PCI-E overclocking, at least not to much of an extent. the max that it will boot at is 105. the max i have gotten the 92xx series up to is 107. anything other than that it isnt showing up to the bios. There is, of course, a slight possibility that this is a symptom of the motherboard, but i havent heard of classifieds having any serious pci-e overclocking issues. I assume it is some sort of self-protection? can anyone else with the card try to bump the pci-e up?

[eva2000]

excellent find steve- wonder if they will have memory for it
i did find one retailer with the recommended 4gb module, for 420 bucks. ouch. went halfway and ordered a guaranteed compatible stick (kingston KVR800D2D8P6/2G) for 60 dollars. same brand, half the size, but seven times cheaper. unbelievable, i feel like im being price gouged, as they are impossible to find. so i wont do it. no ing way. i have ordered from unigen directly, and while the lead time is long, i am doing it on principle
so steve-o my man...you seem noticeably absent from the 1880 party, you gonna join?
my results are super late but RLS is hampering me...

@Biker, i have recieved a reply from areca on the stick you linked, they say it is no good as it isnt registered they are full of ideas on ram that WONT work, but none when it comes to ram that will work.

bit silly to design the cache to not accept a wider variety of modules!

[Computurd]

yes, there is not a very large selection of ram meeting their specifications on the market at this point. They are basically contracting with Unigen to expand that availability, unfortunately that is in the beginning stages, but soon the modules will be available for us. bit of a wait, unfortunately. there are plenty of modules available for the 2GB size, but it is 4GB that is the problem.

I have built a bit of a rapport with one of their support techs, and i will say this, their tech support is stellar. they are friendly and helpful, and have helped me to explore some possibilities. I have been ignored by some manufacturers once they find out about the non-server motherboard, non-supported drives, etc. That can be frustrating as they then basically blow you off.
So, Areca's willingness to help is nice. Even though the ram issue is frustrating, it takes a bit of the sting out of it.
Asked a few other questions here and there and on the subject of TRIM support i was given this response:

The TRIM command specification is being standardized as part of the AT Attachment (ATA) interface standard, led by Technical Committee T13 of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards. A TRIM command allows an operating system to tell a solid-state drive (or "SSD") which data blocks are no longer in use, such as those left by deleted files. You should use the OS build-in ATA command device driver to communicate the ATA port for TRIM command. But, most of the RAID adapters emulate the SCSI command to support more volumes on one RAID adapter. That's why the TRIM command can not support on all vendors of RAID adapters. NetAPP just proposal the Trim command for SCSI spec to T10/10-084r0 and 079r0 on 2 March 2010. It may be included the Trim function on the OS in the future. This is the only method to add the function on the firmware level.

This is enlightening as it helps to explain our long wait for TRIM in regards to Raid. The problem with hardware raid passing the command is apparently the result of needing to be included in SCSI spec.

[Computurd]

4k low QD with pci-e at 105
main thing here is the latency...wow!

[Anvil]

Nizzen surpassed 100.000 4K rr iops last night using the C300s, not sure of what settings he used.

(might have been the read ahead stuff, I'll ask him)

[eva2000]

yes, there is not a very large selection of ram meeting their specifications on the market at this point. They are basically contracting with Unigen to expand that availability, unfortunately that is in the beginning stages, but soon the modules will be available for us. bit of a wait, unfortunately. there are plenty of modules available for the 2GB size, but it is 4GB that is the problem.

interesting got this from my local Australian disty for Areca - unfortunately 1880ix-12 stock is 1 month away only 1880ix-8 and 1880ix-16 is available right now

Confirmed that we can bundle Fanout (discrete) cables for free.
We have qualified 4GB DDR2-800 ECC memory for our RAID controllers.
D2-4GB800E AUD$195.00 ex GST - brands may vary depending on availability - such are Infineon, Samsung, Hynix, Nanya or Micron.

So they have a qualified 4GB DDR2-800 ECC module for Areca at AUD$195 so add 10% GST = AUD$214.50

btw guys did your 1880ix come with free cables ?

[Anvil]

About the same price in Norway for the 4GB module.

Will know for sure about the cabling in about 30minutes.
(According to Nizzen a few cables were included but not miniSAS->SATA fan-outs)