New Flash Drive Design Said To Transform Networks For Big Data


	They say that in the age of big data, data sets are often far too large to fit in a single computer’s RAM. And they add that flash memory is an enticing way to go because it’s only one tenth as expensive and consumes about a tenth as much power as RAM. They have built a prototype network of 20 servers, each connected to a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), a chip that can be reprogrammed to mimic different types of electrical circuits. Each FPGA was then connected to two 500GB flash chips and to the two FPGAs nearest it in the server rack. “Because the FPGAs were connected to each other, they created a very fast network that allowed any server to retrieve data from any flash drive,” MIT says.