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Silicon Image/CMD Medley Software RAID

PATCH [email protected] 3 participants 3 messages Oct 7, 2003

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#0 lore raw

Hi Thomas,

While we are on the subject of Silicon Image hardware, I wanted to ask --- is this normal that this hardware (boxed as "EIO AP-1680 IDE RAID card"), see this URL for more info):

http://www.ivmm.com/eio/products_ap1680.html

so horrendously slow, without even using any of its RAID functions (which would be slow understandably as they are software RAID)?

Numbers. My IDE drives perform 22-25M/sec (hdparm -t) when connected
to the onboard IDE controller (6BXD SMP motherboard, old, 2xPIII550, 1G RAM) but when connected to this RAID card and used as plain physical disks (no RAID sets configured) they give 2M/sec using DMA and 4M/sec when I disable DMA.

I see many people mentioning Silicon Image hardware here, so I assumed it is a useable hardware, but if everyone is getting 2M/sec (or 4M/sec and hog the whole system performance with PIO!) then am I the first one who noticed that the king is, in fact, naked? Shouldn't I expect a decent 20-25M/sec hdparm -t from the drives connected to the additional IDE card (be it RAID or no RAID, just extra IDE slots)?

Kind regards
Tigran

#1 lore raw

Hi Tigran,

IMO Silicon Image is a good hardware.

Quoted 8 lines · On Tuesday 07 of October 2003 16:02, [email protected] wrote:

Hi Thomas,

While we are on the subject of Silicon Image hardware, I wanted to ask --- is this normal that this hardware (boxed as "EIO AP-1680 IDE RAID card"), see this URL for more info):

http://www.ivmm.com/eio/products_ap1680.html

Quoted 8 lines

so horrendously slow, without even using any of its RAID functions (which would be slow understandably as they are software RAID)?

Numbers. My IDE drives perform 22-25M/sec (hdparm -t) when connected to the onboard IDE controller (6BXD SMP motherboard, old, 2xPIII550, 1G RAM) but when connected to this RAID card and used as plain physical disks (no RAID sets configured) they give 2M/sec using DMA and 4M/sec when I disable DMA.

What kernel version?
dmesg please.

Quoted 6 lines

I see many people mentioning Silicon Image hardware here, so I assumed it is a useable hardware, but if everyone is getting 2M/sec (or 4M/sec and hog the whole system performance with PIO!) then am I the first one who noticed that the king is, in fact, naked? Shouldn't I expect a decent 20-25M/sec hdparm -t from the drives connected to the additional IDE card (be it RAID or no RAID, just extra IDE slots)?

There is a rqsize limit problem with SiI SATA controllers (please search archive for discussion), but ATA shouldn't be affected.

--bartlomiej

#2 lore raw
In reply to [email protected]
Quoted 3 lines · [email protected] wrote:

so horrendously slow, without even using any of its RAID functions (which would be slow understandably as they are software RAID)?

There isn't any reason for software raid to be slower than hardware
raid. On the 3ware ide raid controller. Linux software raid 5 is easily x2 as fast as hardware raid 5 on the same controller.

Signature · 3 lines
Once you have their hardware. Never give it back.
(The First Rule of Hardware Acquisition)
Sam Flory  <[email protected]>