ArsTechnica has done it usual and gone deeper into Apple Fusion drives, now using a true Fusion drive from a Mac Mini. They show how the technology works and the caveats (if one drive goes the whole partition goes, and everything writes first to the SSD, which you can’t control).
He was able to re-create a Fusion Drive using an SSD and a regular hard drive. Of course the 2 drive setups means more possibility of errors as if one drive fails, they both fail, but it seems more likely that 3rd parties will be able to offer Fusion drives.
He has also posted more on building your own Fusion Drive and Fusion Drive Loose ends.
Anandtech has a very good article on the Mac Fusion Drive, and how it works and who it is good for.
Sounds great to me personally, and I would love one for my MacPro if that is possible (probably not).
I like the idea of the pinning and moving, as I have about 1 TB currently on my main system hard drive, so the 3TB with Fusion would be awesome. Hopefully a 3rd party can figure this out and have 256MB instead of 128MB with the 3TB.
I know, I know I should just go SSD, but I just don’t have enough hard drive space. I have all 4 drives in my MacPro with 2TB hard drives (would love to have 3’s some day) and no room to add an SSD at all (even have 2 optical drives, a DVD-R and a Blu-Ray burner as well)..
ArsTechnica also got it’s eye caught by the new Fusion drive, and speculates on how it works.
Let hops 3rd parties can figure this out, and we can have these additions for MacPro’s in the future. I would love to move my main drive to a Fusion drive in the future.
The 1 TB is an additional $250 for the MacMini and you can’t pre-order the new iMac’s yet, so you can’t see what the 3TB will set you back, but the price of a 3rd parties would be less, and well worth the speed increase.
Apple has updated it’s Mac Mini. For $599 or $799 you either get a dual core i5 or a quad core i, though with only the intel Graphics HD 4000 for graphics. And for $999 you get the server version with 2 hard drives and Mountain Lion Server.
Still a very powerful desktop computer in a very small size, though not for CUDA unless you added a thunderbolt expansion chasis for way too much.
Impressively this can also be built with a Fusion drive for added speed.
Apple has updated it’s iMac and it is thinner and more powerful, and now sans a CD rom drive.
Most impressive for editing are NVIDIA Mobile processors across the line, so they should all be great for CUDA in Premiere Pro. The low end has a GT 640M with 512MB of RAM, the second has a GT 650M with 512MB, the 3rd has a GTX 660m with 512MB and the high end has a GTX 675 with 1GB of RAM (best for editing right there). Even better the high end is configurable to a Geforce GTX 680MX with 2GB of RAM!
Too bad ll the stock models have i5 processors, but you can upgrade to an i7 that is 3.4Ghz. The high end also has user addable RAM, though the smaller model is soldered, but comes with 8GB to start.
Another exciting upgrade is the Fusion Drive you can get in BTO. It has 128GB of Flash Ram tied to 1 or 3 TB of regular hard drive, so your system can be on the fast Fusion, but you seamlessly get FLASH speeds for your system.
Starting at $1299-$1999 and available in November to December.
You have to configure it, but it really could be a great editing machine, especially with Thunderbolt, though I would prefer a non-mobile video card personally.