Scott Jackson
Intel

Since 1997, CPU clock frequencies have increased tenfold and memory bandwidth sixfold, while hard-drive performance has grown a mere threefold. The effect of this trend is best explained in Patterson, Gibson, and Katz's opening of their 1988 "A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)" paper, introducing RAID. "Increasing performance of CPUs and memories will be squandered," they stated, "if not matched by similar performance increase in I/O." Their paper proposed several levels of RAID, all aimed at increasing disk I/O performance and reliability. Until recently, the performance and reliability of RAID were available only to a limited few willing to pay the high price carried by SCSI-based systems. The introduction of IDE RAID—Integrated Drive Electronics RAID—has allowed for a cost-effective RAID solution, broadening market reach into the mainstream, low-end server, and workstation market segments.