15-213

“The course that gives CMU its Zip!”

Disk-based Storage
Oct. 23, 2008
Topics
 Storage technologies and trends
 Locality of reference
 Caching in the memory hierarchy

lecture-17.ppt
Announcements
Exam next Thursday
 style like exam #1: in class, open book/notes, no electronics

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 Disk-based storage in computers
 Memory/storage hierarchy
 Combining many technologies to balance costs/benefits
 Recall the memory hierarchy and virtual memory lectures

3 15-213, F’08
 Memory/storage hierarchies
 Balancing performance with cost
 Small memories are fast but expensive
 Large memories are slow but cheap

 Exploit locality to get the best of both worlds

 locality = re-use/nearness of accesses
 allows most accesses to use small, fast memory

Capacity

Performance
4 15-213, F’08
An Example Memory Hierarchy
Smaller, L0:
faster, registers CPU registers hold words retrieved
and from L1 cache.
costlier L1: on-chip L1
(per byte) cache (SRAM) L1 cache holds cache lines retrieved
storage from the L2 cache memory.
devices L2: off-chip L2
cache (SRAM) L2 cache holds cache lines
retrieved from main memory.

L3: main memory

Larger, (DRAM)
Main memory holds disk
slower, blocks retrieved from local
and disks.
cheaper local secondary storage
L4:
(per byte) (local disks)
storage Local disks hold files
devices retrieved from disks on
remote network servers.

L5: remote secondary storage

(tapes, distributed file systems, Web servers)

5 From lecture-9.ppt
15-213, F’08
Page Faults
A page fault is caused by a reference to a VM word that is not in
physical (main) memory
 Example: An instruction references a word contained in VP 3, a miss
that triggers a page fault exception
Physical memory
Virtual address Physical page (DRAM)
number or
VP 1 PP 0
Valid disk address
VP 2
PTE 0 0 null VP 7
1 VP 4 PP 3
1
0
1
0 null Virtual memory
0 (disk)
PTE 7 1 VP 1
Memory resident VP 2
page table VP 3
(DRAM)
VP 4
VP 6
6 From lecture-14.ppt
VP 7 15-213, F’08
 Disk-based storage in computers
 Memory/storage hierarchy
 Combining many technologies to balance costs/benefits
 Recall the memory hierarchy and virtual memory lectures

 Persistence
 Storing data for lengthy periods of time
 DRAM/SRAM is “volatile”: contents lost if power lost
 Disks are “non-volatile”: contents survive power outages
 To be useful, it must also be possible to find it again later
 this brings in many interesting data organization, consistency,
and management issues
 take 18-746/15-746 Storage Systems 
 we’ll talk a bit about file systems next

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What’s Inside A Disk Drive?
Spindle
Arm Platters

Actuator

Electronics

SCSI
connector
Image courtesy of Seagate Technology

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Disk Electronics
Just like a small
computer – processor,
memory, network iface

• Connect to disk

• Control processor

• Cache memory
• Control ASIC

• Connect to motor

9 15-213, F’08
Disk “Geometry”
Disks contain platters, each with two surfaces
Each surface organized in concentric rings called tracks
Each track consists of sectors separated by gaps
tracks
surface
track k gaps

spindle

sectors
10 15-213, F’08
Disk Geometry (Muliple-Platter View)
Aligned tracks form a cylinder
cylinder k

surface 0
platter 0
surface 1
surface 2
platter 1
surface 3
surface 4
platter 2
surface 5

spindle

11 15-213, F’08
Disk Structure

Read/Write Head Arm

Upper Surface
Platter
Lower Surface

Cylinder

Track

Sector
Actuator

12 15-213, F’08
Disk Operation (Single-Platter View)

The disk
surface The read/write head
spins at a fixed is attached to the end
rotational rate of the arm and flies over
the disk surface on
a thin cushion of air

spindle
spindle
spindle
spindle

By moving radially, the arm

can position the read/write
head over any track

13 15-213, F’08
Disk Operation (Multi-Platter View)
read/write heads
move in unison
from cylinder to cylinder

arm

spindle

14 15-213, F’08
Disk Structure - top view of single
platter

Surface organized into tracks

Tracks divided into sectors

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Disk Access

Head in position above a track

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Disk Access

Rotation is counter-clockwise

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Disk Access – Read

About to read blue sector

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Disk Access – Read

After BLUE read

After reading blue sector

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Disk Access – Read

After BLUE read

Red request scheduled next

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Disk Access – Seek

After BLUE read Seek for RED

Seek to red’s track

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Disk Access – Rotational Latency

After BLUE read Seek for RED Rotational latency

Wait for red sector to rotate around

22 15-213, F’08
Disk Access – Read

After BLUE read Seek for RED Rotational latency After RED read

Complete read of red

23 15-213, F’08
Disk Access – Service Time
Components

After BLUE read Seek for RED Rotational latency After RED read

Seek
Rotational Latency
Data Transfer

24 15-213, F’08
Disk Access Time
Average time to access a specific sector approximated by:
 Taccess = Tavg seek + Tavg rotation + Tavg transfer
Seek time (Tavg seek)
 Time to position heads over cylinder containing target sector
 Typical Tavg seek = 3-5 ms
Rotational latency (Tavg rotation)
 Time waiting for first bit of target sector to pass under r/w head
 Tavg rotation = 1/2 x 1/RPMs x 60 sec/1 min
 e.g., 3ms for 10,000 RPM disk

Transfer time (Tavg transfer)

 Time to read the bits in the target sector
 Tavg transfer = 1/RPM x 1/(avg # sectors/track) x 60 secs/1 min
 e.g., 0.006ms for 10,000 RPM disk with 1,000 sectors/track
25  given 512-byte sectors, ~85 MB/s data transfer rate 15-213, F’08
Disk Access Time Example
Given:
 Rotational rate = 7,200 RPM
 Average seek time = 5 ms
 Avg # sectors/track = 1000
Derived average time to access random sector:
 Tavg rotation = 1/2 x (60 secs/7200 RPM) x 1000 ms/sec = 4 ms
 Tavg transfer = 60/7200 RPM x 1/400 secs/track x 1000 ms/sec =
0.008 ms
 Taccess = 5 ms + 4 ms + 0.008 ms = 9.008 ms
 Time to second sector: 0.008 ms

Important points:
 Access time dominated by seek time and rotational latency
 First bit in a sector is the most expensive, the rest are free
 SRAM access time is about 4 ns/doubleword, DRAM about 60 ns
 ~100,000 times longer to access a word on disk than in DRAM

26 15-213, F’08
Disk storage as array of blocks

…5 6 7 12 23 …
OS’s view of storage device
(as exposed by SCSI or IDE/ATA protocols)

 Common “logical block” size: 512 bytes

 Number of blocks: device capacity / block size
 Common OS-to-storage requests defined by few fields
 R/W, block #, # of blocks, memory source/dest

27 15-213, F’08
Page Faults
A page fault is caused by a reference to a VM word that is not in
physical (main) memory
 “logical
Example: An instruction references block”
a word number
contained can3, be
in VP a miss
that triggers a page fault exception
remembered in page table to
Physical memory
Virtual address Physical identify
page disk location for pages
(DRAM)
number or not resident in main memory
VP 1 PP 0
Valid disk address
VP 2
PTE 0 0 null VP 7
1 VP 4 PP 3
1
0
1
0 null Virtual memory
0 (disk)
PTE 7 1 VP 1
Memory resident VP 2
page table VP 3
(DRAM)
VP 4
VP 6
28 From lecture-14.ppt
VP 7 15-213, F’08
In device, “blocks” mapped to physical store

Disk Sector
(usually same size as block)

29 15-213, F’08
Physical sectors of a single-surface
disk

30 15-213, F’08
LBN-to-physical for a single-surface
disk
4 5

3 16 17
6
15 28 29 18
27 30
40 41
2 39 42 7
14 19
26
38 43 31
37 44 32
25
1 13 36 45 20 8
4 46
24 7 33
12 35 34 21
0 22 9
23

11 10

31 15-213, F’08
Disk Capacity

Capacity: maximum number of bits that can be stored

 Vendors express capacity in units of gigabytes (GB), where
1 GB = 109 Bytes (Lawsuit pending! Claims deceptive advertising)

Capacity is determined by these technology factors:

 Recording density (bits/in): number of bits that can be squeezed
into a 1 inch linear segment of a track
 Track density (tracks/in): number of tracks that can be squeezed
into a 1 inch radial segment
 Areal density (bits/in2): product of recording and track density

32 15-213, F’08
 Computing Disk Capacity
Capacity = (# bytes/sector) x (avg. # sectors/track) x
(# tracks/surface) x (# surfaces/platter) x
(# platters/disk)
Example:
 512 bytes/sector
 1000 sectors/track (on average)
 20,000 tracks/surface
 2 surfaces/platter
 5 platters/disk

Capacity = 512 x 1000 x 80000 x 2 x 5

= 409,600,000,000
= 409.6 GB
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Looking back at the hardware
CPU chip
register file

ALU

main
bus interface
memory

34 15-213, F’08
Connecting I/O devices: the I/O Bus
CPU chip
register file

ALU
system bus memory bus

I/O main
bus interface
bridge memory

I/O bus Expansion slots for

other devices such
USB graphics disk as network adapters
controller adapter controller

mouse keyboard monitor

disk
35 15-213, F’08
Reading from disk (1)
CPU chip
CPU initiates a disk read by writing a READ
register file
command, logical block number, number of
blocks, and destination memory address to a
ALU
port (address) associated with disk controller

main
bus interface
memory

I/O bus

USB graphics disk

controller adapter controller

mouse keyboard monitor

disk
36 15-213, F’08
Reading from disk (2)
CPU chip
Disk controller reads the sectors and
register file
performs a direct memory access (DMA)
transfer into main memory
ALU

main
bus interface
memory

I/O bus

USB graphics disk

controller adapter controller

mouse keyboard monitor

disk
37 15-213, F’08
Reading from disk (3)
CPU chip
When the DMA transfer completes, the
register file
disk controller notifies the CPU with an
interrupt (i.e., asserts a special “interrupt”
ALU
pin on the CPU)

main
bus interface
memory

I/O bus

USB graphics disk

controller adapter controller

mouse keyboard monitor

disk
38 15-213, F’08