That sounds like a neat job. I haven't spent much time with databases.
I could see this. They're just requesting required pages, although I'm wondering whether the type of data being represented makes a difference here. If it's something that can be easily retrieved from some kind of B-tree structure rather than say something GIS related, I would expect the requests to conform to this. That is somewhat speculative on my part.
I was thinking more along the lines of video processing. There you may have multiple streams corresponding to different channels (much more efficient as the underlying engine can use simd arithmetic types without extra data movement), where deinterlaced raw video or a complicated comp of some kind could actually make use of that bandwidth, particularly if memory mapping of files on disk is allowed and used.
Yeah I noticed that. An ssd has a lot of advantages over the older spinning drives for a notebook, but it falls off at some point when used as a system drive. I don't doubt that Apple uses expensive ones, but I suspect that at fixed price points, a lot of people would benefit more from higher capacity ssds than faster ones.
I know very very little about video processing so I can't really speak to the performance requirements of that activity.
the DB I work in is only b-tree for searches. So it has a heavy disk IO requirement especially on index hits. but as said, fast IO here is responsive ness and ability to get to the data quickly. Not transfer the data in bulk.
really this emphasizes the point though that workload, software efficiency all around tend to make a larger difference on performance these days than raw throughput (when you get into SSD territory).
overall what it comes down to is bottleneck. where is it for the application specific requirement. in the case of the MBA, the bulk of the bottleneck in all performance is likely the CPU. you can throw a 10000000MB/s SSD all you want at it for boot/application purposes, but if the CPU is going to calculate slower than the data can be accessed, than the speed is ultimately irrelevant for most tasks.
It's frustrating because while the new MBA did bring about upgrades in a few specs, like resolution of the display, many other parts were essentially downgraded. the CPU, keyboard, Soldered Storage, the displays colour accuracy (and that's something considering the bad tN panel of the previous gen)
Simpy put, while the device is a decent little laptop. it should NOT have warranted nearly 20% price increase.
you know what the 2018 MBA feels like? The 2014 Mini.
