William Stallings

Computer Organization
and Architecture
8th Edition

External Memory
Types of External Memory
• Magnetic Disk
—RAID( Redendent array of Independent Disk)
—Removable
• Optical
—CD-ROM
—CD-Recordable (CD-R)
—CD-R/W
—DVD
• Magnetic Tape
Magnetic Disk
• Disk substrate (non-magnetic material) coated
with magnetizable material (iron oxide…rust)
• Substrate has been an aluminium or aluminium
alloy
• Now glass substrate and has the following
benefits:
—Improved surface uniformity
– Increases reliability of disk
—Reduction in surface defects
– Reduced read/write errors
—Better stiffness(rigidity) to reduce disk
dynamics
—Better shock/damage resistance
Read and Write Mechanisms
• Recording & retrieval via conductive coil called a head
• May be single read/write head or separate ones
• During read/write, head is stationary while a platter
rotates beneath it
• Write
— Current through coil produces magnetic field
— Pulses sent to write head
— Magnetic pattern recorded on surface below
— With different pattern for positive and negative current
— Write head itself made up of magntizable material
— An electric current in the wire induces a magnetic field across
the gap
— In result magnetize the a small area of recording medium.
Read and write.....
• Read (traditional)
— Magnetic field moving relative to coil produces current in the
coil
— Coil is the same for read and write( the same head is used for
reading and writing)
— When the surface of the disk pass under the head, it generate
a current of the same polarity as the one already recorded
• Read (modern rigid disk system)
— Separate read head, close to write head
— The read head consists of Partially shielded magneto resistive
(MR) sensor
— Electrical resistance(MR) depends on direction of magnetic
field moving under it
— By passing current through MR sensor resistance are detected
as voltage signal
— MR provides:
– High frequency operation which equates to grater storage density and
speed
Inductive Write MR Read
Data Organization and Formatting
• The head is relatively small devices
capable of reading from or writing to a
portion of plotter
• This gives rise to the organization of data
on the platter in the concentric ring(track)
• Each track has the width as the head
• The are thousands of the track per surface
Data organization......
• Concentric rings or tracks
—Gaps between tracks(used to minimize error)
—Reduce gap to increase capacity
—Constant angular velocity
• Tracks divided into sectors
• Sector is used to transfer data on and
from the disk
• There are typically hundreds of sector per
track this may be fixed or variable in size
• Minimum block size is one sector
• May have more than one sector per block
Disk Data Layout
 Disk Velocity
• Bit near centre of rotating disk passes fixed point
slower than bit on outside of disk
• Some way must be found to compensate the speed
— Increase spacing between bits in different tracks as a result
head can read all the bit at the same rate
• Rotate disk at constant angular velocity (CAV)
— CAV means the information can then been scanned at the
same rate by rotating the disk at fixed speed
— CAV system maximum recording density is depends on the
density innermost track
— Advantages
– Individual blocks of data directly address by track and sector
– To Move head to current address it takes a short movement of a track
and a short wait for given sector
Disadvantages
—The amount of data on that can be stored in
the long outer track is the same as in the inner
short track
– Waste of space on outer tracks
– Lower data density
• To increase density modern hard disk uses a
technique called multiple zone recording
• multiple zone recording
— The surface is divided in a zone, with in a zone the no
of bit per track is constant
— Zone further from the centre contains more bit than
zone closer to the centre
— Each zone has fixed bits per track
— More complex circuitry
Disk Layout Methods Diagram
Finding Sectors
• Some means is needed to locate sector
position in the track
• Must be able to identify start of track and
sector
• It is handled by the control data recorded
on the disk
—Format disk
– Additional information not available to user
– Marks tracks and sectors
• An example of disk format(design):
—Each track contain 30 fixed length sector of
600 byte each
—Each sector holds 512 byte data + control
information useful for disk controller
—ID fields uniquely identify or address the
particular sector
—The ID and the data field holds the error
detecting codes
—The SYNCH byte special bit pattern that
delimit (define) the beginning of the field.
Winchester Disk Format
Seagate ST506
Characteristics
• Head motion
—Fixed (rare) or ( with respect to radial direction of the
pattern
—movable head
• Disk portability
—Removable or Non removable(fixed)
• Side( magnetizable material applied to both side of the
platter
—Single or double
• platter
—Single or multiple
• Head mechanism
—Contact (Floppy)
—Fixed gap
—Flying (Winchester)
Fixed/Movable Head Disk
• Fixed head
—One read write head per track
—Heads mounted on fixed ridged arm
• Movable head
—One read write head per side
— head Mounted on a movable arm
Removable or Not
• Removable disk
—Can be removed from drive and replaced with
another disk
—Provides unlimited storage capacity
—Easy data transfer between systems
• Nonremovable disk
—Permanently mounted in the drive
Multiple Platter
• One head per side
• Heads are joined and aligned
• Aligned tracks on each platter form
cylinders
• All the heads are mechanically fixed and
the same distance from the centre, move
together
• The set of all tracks in the same relative
position on the plotter is called cylinder
• Data is striped by cylinder
—reduces head movement
—Increases speed (transfer rate)
Multiple Platters
Tracks and Cylinders
Floppy Disk
• 8”, 5.25”, 3.5”
• Small capacity
—Up to 1.44Mbyte (2.88M never popular)
• Slow
• Universal
• Cheap
• Obsolete?
Winchester Hard Disk (1)
• To understand the Winchester hard disk it
is necessary to discuss about the data
density and the size of the air gap
—The head sense or generate electro magnetic
field of sufficient magnitude to read/write.
—A narrower head means narrower track and
grater data density
—However ,it result to the greater risk error
form impurities
—Finally to solve this problem Winchester
developed
• Developed by IBM in Winchester (USA)
• heads are Sealed unit almost free of
contaminant( impurities )
• It designed closer to the disk surfaces
than previous it allows grater data
density
• One or more platters (disks)
• Heads fly on boundary layer of air as disk
spin
• Very small head to disk gap
Winchester Hard Disk (2)
• Universal
• Cheap
• Fastest external storage
• Getting larger all the time
—250 Gigabyte now easily available
Disk performance parameter (Speed)
• Seek time
—Moving head to correct track
• (Rotational) latency
—Waiting for data to rotate under head
• Access time = Seek + Latency
• Transfer time: the time it takes to transfer
a data.
• In addition to the above there are:
—When a processor issue and I/O request it
must wait in the queue
—Again if it shares additional I/O channels it
wait for channels to be available
Timing of Disk I/O Transfer
RAID
• Redundant Array of Independent Disks
• Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
• 6(from 0-6) levels in common use
• Not a hierarchy but it designate different
design architecture that share three
common characteristics
—Set of physical disks drive viewed as single
logical drive by O/S
—Data distributed across physical drives of any
array
—Can use redundant capacity to store parity
information, which grantees data recoverability
when disk frailer.
• The RAID strategy is that replace large
capacity drives by multiple small capacity
drives
• And distribute the data in such a way as
to enable simultaneous access to multiple
drives
• In result this improves I/O performance
and allowing easier incremental increases
in capacity
RAID 0
• It is not true family of RAID because it
does not include redundancy to improve
performance
• But it increases capacity and it is cheapest
• Data striped across all disks
• Round Robin striping
• Increase speed
—Multiple data requests probably not on same
disk
—Disks seek in parallel
—A set of data is likely to be striped across
multiple disks
 RAID 1
• Data stripe is used as RAID 0 but
• Each logical strip is mapped to two separate physical
disk so every disk in the array has mirror disk that
contains the same data
• Data is striped across disks
• 2 copies of each stripe on separate disks
• Read from either
• Write to both
• Recovery is simple
—When a driver fails the data may be accessed from
the second disk (Swap faulty disk & re-mirror),No
down time
• Expensive
RAID 2
• Disks are synchronized
• Very small stripes
—Often single byte/word
• Error correction calculated across
corresponding bits on disks
• Multiple parity disks store Hamming code
error correction in corresponding positions
• Lots of redundancy
—Expensive
—Not used( implemented)
RAID 3
• Similar to RAID 2
• Only one redundant disk, no matter how
large the array
• Simple parity bit for each set of
corresponding bits
• Data on failed drive can be reconstructed
from surviving data and parity info
• Very high transfer rates
RAID 4
• Each disk operates independently
• Good for high I/O request rate
• Large stripes
• Bit by bit parity calculated across stripes
on each disk
• Parity stored on parity disk
RAID 5
• Like RAID 4
• Parity striped across all disks
• Round robin allocation for parity stripe
• Avoids RAID 4 bottleneck at parity disk
• Commonly used in network servers

• N.B. DOES NOT MEAN 5 DISKS!!!!!

RAID 6
• Two parity calculations
• Stored in separate blocks on different
disks
• User requirement of N disks needs N+2
• High data availability
—Three disks need to fail for data loss
—Significant write penalty
RAID 0, 1, 2
RAID 3 & 4
RAID 5 & 6
Data Mapping For RAID 0
Optical Storage CD-ROM
• Originally for audio
• 650Mbytes giving over 70 minutes audio
• Polycarbonate coated with highly
reflective coat, usually aluminium
• Data stored as pits
• Read by reflecting laser
• Constant packing density
• Constant linear velocity
CD Operation
CD-ROM Drive Speeds
• Audio is single speed
—Constant linier velocity
—1.2 ms-1
—Track (spiral) is 5.27km long
—Gives 4391 seconds = 73.2 minutes
• Other speeds are quoted as multiples
• e.g. 24x
• Quoted figure is maximum drive can
achieve
CD-ROM Format

• Mode 0=blank data field

• Mode 1=2048 byte data+error correction
• Mode 2=2336 byte data
Random Access on CD-ROM
• Difficult
• Move head to rough position
• Set correct speed
• Read address
• Adjust to required location
• (Yawn!)
CD-ROM for & against
• Large capacity (?)
• Easy to mass produce
• Removable
• Robust

• Expensive for small runs

• Slow
• Read only
Other Optical Storage
• CD-Recordable (CD-R)
—WORM
—Now affordable
—Compatible with CD-ROM drives
• CD-RW
—Erasable
—Getting cheaper
—Mostly CD-ROM drive compatible
—Phase change
– Material has two different reflectivities in different
phase states
DVD - what’s in a name?
• Digital Video Disk
—Used to indicate a player for movies
– Only plays video disks
• Digital Versatile Disk
—Used to indicate a computer drive
– Will read computer disks and play video disks
• Dogs Veritable Dinner
• Officially - nothing!!!
DVD - technology
• Multi-layer
• Very high capacity (4.7G per layer)
• Full length movie on single disk
—Using MPEG compression
• Finally standardized (honest!)
• Movies carry regional coding
• Players only play correct region films
• Can be “fixed”
DVD – Writable
• Loads of trouble with standards
• First generation DVD drives may not read
first generation DVD-W disks
• First generation DVD drives may not read
CD-RW disks
• Wait for it to settle down before buying!
CD and DVD
High Definition Optical Disks
• Designed for high definition videos
• Much higher capacity than DVD
—Shorter wavelength laser
– Blue-violet range
—Smaller pits
• HD-DVD
—15GB single side single layer
• Blue-ray
—Data layer closer to laser
– Tighter focus, less distortion, smaller pits
—25GB on single layer
—Available read only (BD-ROM), Recordable
once (BR-R) and re-recordable (BR-RE)
Optical Memory Characteristics
Magnetic Tape
• Serial access
• Slow
• Very cheap
• Backup and archive
• Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Tape Drives
—Developed late 1990s
—Open source alternative to proprietary tape
systems
Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Tape Drives
LTO-1 LTO-2 LTO-3 LTO-4 LTO-5 LTO-6

Release date 2000 2003 2005 2007 TBA TBA

Compressed capacity 200 GB 400 GB 800 GB 1600 GB 3.2 TB 6.4 TB

Compressed transfer 40 80 160 240 360 540

rate (MB/s)

Linear density 4880 7398 9638 13300

(bits/mm)

Tape tracks 384 512 704 896

Tape length 609 m 609 m 680 m 820 m

Tape width (cm) 1.27 1.27 1.27 1.27

Write elements 8 8 16 16
Internet Resources
• Optical Storage Technology Association
—Good source of information about optical
storage technology and vendors
—Extensive list of relevant links
• DLTtape
—Good collection of technical information and
links to vendors
• Search on RAID