This talk takes us on a journey through three varied, but interconnected

topics. First, our research lab has engaged in a series of disk-based

computations extending over five years. Disks have traditionally

been used for filesystems, for virtual memory, and for databases.

Disk-based computation opens up an important fourth use: an abstraction

for multiple disks that allows parallel programs to treat them in a

manner similar to RAM. The key observation is that 50 disks have

approximately the same parallel bandwidth as a _single_ RAM subsystem.

This leaves latency as the primary concern. A second key is the use

of techniques like delayed duplicate detection to avoid latency

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