Popular Blog Posts
Re-Evolution, not Revolution
Most Coraid customers are happy using our storage appliances without digging into the technology or the design philosophy that lies beneath. Some people, however, seem to be interested in our unusual outlook, so I thought I’d talk about one of those oddities. At Coraid, we build almost all the software we use. We do this because we strive for the highest quality, and our idea of quality has to do with simplicity, clarity, and generality. To get what we want, we need control of each layer in our systems, right down to the ...
The PIX
(Thanks to Adamantios for the picture! CC BY SA 3.0 ) Twenty-five years ago this month, I hung up the phone in my kitchen. I paused, my hand still on the receiver, and watched my wife Betsy make dinner as our five-year-old daughter played with chess pieces on the ...
Underlying C
A few months ago a friend directed me to an academic project, one that aimed to update C for the modern programmer. It’s not the first time people have done this—adding stuff to C is a time-honored practice. All technology, as I am apt to repeat, is an imprint of a few core ideas. There are two of these ideas at the heart of C: unity with the underlying machine and the freedom to do anything that the machine can do. You can see these ideas expressed in many aspects of the ...
The Flight
It was a clear but gusty day, and all of a sudden the right wing wanted to be much higher than the left. I jammed the wheel to the right, maneuvering the rouge wing level to the horizon. Seconds later, the wing again jerked upward. The plane’s nose wanted to drift up too, so I pushed the wheel for a few moments until it dropped. My feet jabbed at the rudder pedals to keep pointed straight. It was a fast dance in three directions, knees and elbows moving like mad. Low over Oklahoma City and headed to Will Rogers World Airport, the tower ...
Latest Posts
The Joys of Ethernet
What would someone who invented ATA-over-Ethernet say? On top of that, I called my products EtherDrive SAN. Kind of get the picture? I love Ethernet. This is a modern photo of some crazy person (not me) playing with 10Base5. That’s 10 as in 10 Mb and 5 as in 500 meters, or how long a yellow snake you could hide above the acoustic tiles and still work. And ... Read more→
How to Think About Virtual Machines
They are a part of our daily lives. Using VMware or Hyper-V under windows, we run dozen, hundreds, and for large shops, even thousands of them. What are they? Virtual Machines. Flocks, swarms, should I say it, clouds of machines that are the mere software imagined hardware. ... Read more→
How to Think About Virtual Machines: Part Two
The great thing about us being technically inclined, by us being so curious about how things work that we wind up in some sort of Information Technology field, or as I like to call it, Data Technology--it isn’t information until someone reads and grocks it--is that we can read. By read, I mean we can turn words into understanding, into working knowledge in our minds. We can “see” it. By reading a book we can ... Read more→
How to Think About Virtual Machines Part 3
Fetch-decode-execute-store. This is the repeating, endless, tireless, repetition of the machine. Like some gigantic mobile that is always in motion, the processor of today is cycling through those motions at an other-dimensional speed. Like the science fiction character who moves so fast he is invisible, the computer’s motion seems beyond comprehension. ... Read more→
How to Think About Virtual Machines Part 4
Jeff wandered into Allen’s cubicle, right after lunch and soon after Allen’s arrival at work. Allen was one of those systems programmers, hair a bit long, the beard came and went, stayed until 3 AM and wandered back in around noon. Management talked about him in a sort of hushed, reverent tone. He was the kernel guy. Jeff’s question was simple. ... Read more→
How to Think About Virtual Machines Part 5
IDEAS ARE AMAZING things. One minute, they don’t exist in any real sense of the word. The next, they are permanent monuments of thought never to be unlearned, never unseen. Before an idea’s arrival in someone’s mind, there is no possibility of even a hint of its existence, and after someone has thought of it, how could it not be the most obvious thing in the world. Intuitively obvious to the most casual observer. ... Read more→