SANTA CLARA, Calif.,
Aug. 11, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
Flash Memory Summit 2015 (HGST Booth #645-647) - Building
upon last-year's record-breaking three million I/O per second Phase
Change Memory (PCM) demonstration[1], HGST, a Western Digital
Company, in collaboration with Mellanox Technologies, is showcasing
a revolutionary PCM-based, RDMA-enabled in-memory compute cluster
architecture that delivers DRAM-like performance at a lower cost of
ownership[2] with greater scalability.
In-memory computing is one of today's hottest data center
trends. Gartner Group projects that software revenue alone
for this market will exceed US $9B by
the end of 2018[3]. In-memory computing enables organizations
to gain business value from real-time insights by offering faster
performance and greater scalability than legacy architectures.
While modern data center applications can benefit from more main
memory, today's DRAM approaches are expensive to scale because of
that memory's volatility: DRAM stores data in leaky capacitors, and
thus needs to be rewritten many times per second to stave off data
loss. This refresh power consumption can be as much as 20-30%
of the total server energy[4]. Emerging non-volatile memory
technologies, such as PCM, do not have this refresh power demand
thereby enabling far greater scalability of main memory than
DRAM.
HGST's breakthrough persistent memory fabric technology delivers
reliable, scalable, low-power memory with DRAM-like performance,
and does not require BIOS modification nor rewriting of
applications. Memory mapping of remote PCM using the Remote Direct
Memory Access (RDMA) protocol over networking infrastructures, such
as Ethernet or InfiniBand, enables a seamless, wide scale
deployment of in-memory computing. This network-based approach
allows applications to harness the non-volatile PCM across multiple
computers to scale out as needed.
The HGST/Mellanox demonstration achieves random access latency
of less than two microseconds for 512 B reads, and throughput
exceeding 3.5 GB/s for two KB block sizes using RDMA over
InfiniBand.
"DRAM is expensive and consumes significant power, but today's
alternatives lack sufficient density and are too slow to be a
viable replacement," said Steve
Campbell, HGST's chief technology officer. "Last year our
Research arm demonstrated Phase Change Memory as a viable DRAM
performance alternative at a new price and capacity tier bridging
main memory and persistent storage. To scale out this level
of performance across the data center requires further
innovation. Our work with Mellanox proves that non-volatile
main memory can be mapped across a network with latencies that fit
inside the performance envelope of in-memory compute
applications."
"Mellanox is excited to be working with HGST to drive persistent
memory fabrics," said Kevin
Deierling, vice president of marketing at Mellanox
Technologies. "To truly shake up the economics of the
in-memory compute ecosystem will require a combination of
networking and storage working together transparently to minimize
latency and maximize scalability. With this demonstration, we
were able to leverage RDMA over InfiniBand to achieve
record-breaking round-trip latencies under two microseconds.
In the future, our goal is to support PCM access using both
InfiniBand and RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) to increase the
scalability and lower the cost of in-memory applications."
"Taking full advantage of the extremely low latency of PCM
across a network has been a grand challenge, seemingly requiring
entirely new processor and network architectures and rewriting of
the application software," said Dr. Zvonimir Bandic, manager of Storage Architecture
at HGST Research. "Our big breakthrough came when we applied the
PCI Express Peer-to-Peer technology, inspired by supercomputers
using general purpose GPUs, to create this low latency storage
fabric using commodity server hardware. This demonstration is
another key step enabling seamless adoption of emerging
non-volatile memories into the data center."
The Persistent Memory Fabric will be demonstrated in the HGST
booth #645-647 at the 2015 Flash Memory Summit
(http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/) in the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA from August 11-13, 2015.
TWEET THIS: HGST & @mellanoxtech showcase low
power DRAM alternative for in-memory compute applications:
http://bit.ly/1KVZX1Q #LongLiveData
About HGST
HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ:
WDC), develops innovative, advanced hard disk drives,
enterprise-class solid state drives, external storage solutions and
services used to store, preserve and manage the world's most valued
data. HGST addresses customers' rapidly changing storage needs by
delivering intelligent storage devices that tightly integrate
hardware and software to maximize solution performance. Founded by
the pioneers of hard drives, HGST provides high-value storage for a
broad range of market segments, including Enterprise, Cloud,
Datacenter, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal
Storage. HGST was established in 2003 and maintains its U.S.
headquarters in San Jose,
California. For more information, please visit the company's
website at http://www.hgst.com.
This press release contains forward-looking statements,
including statements relating to expected demand for certain
categories of SSDs and our ability to deliver and availability
dates for SSD products. These forward-looking statements are
subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results
to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking
statements, including changes in markets, demand, technology
challenges and limitations, global economic conditions and other
risks and uncertainties listed in Western Digital's recent SEC
filings, to which your attention is directed. Readers are cautioned
not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements,
which speak on as of the date hereof, and HGST/WD undertakes no
obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect
subsequent events or circumstances.
Long Live Data is a trademark of HGST, Inc. and its Affiliates
in the United States and/or other
countries. All other trademarks are properties of their respective
owners.
1 https://www.hgst.com/press-room/press-releases/HGST-Research-Demonstrates-World-s-Fastest-SSD-at-Flash-Memory-Summit-
2 http://thememoryguy.com/how-nand-flash-can-reduce-dram-requirements/#more-1138
3 Market Guide for In-Memory Computing
Technologies. Gartner Group, September, 2014.
4 http://www.itrs.net/ITRS%201999-2014%20Mtgs,%20Presentations%20&%20Links/2013ITRS/Summary2013.htm
Contact:
|
|
Erin
Hartin
HGST
Office:
303-284-7790
Erin.Hartin@HGST.com
|
Katie
Watson
Porter
Novelli
Cell:
408-439-2002
HGST_Team@porternovelli.com
|
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SOURCE HGST, A Western Digital Company