Supermicro, a prominent IT solutions provider, has unveiled a new high-performance JBOF (Just a Bunch of Flash) storage system incorporating advanced technology to enhance data storage and processing capabilities. The announcement was made by Charles Liang, the president and CEO of Supermicro, who detailed the new product's features, highlighting its utilisation of a building block approach to support E3.S or U.2 form factor SSDs and the latest PCIe Gen 5 connectivity for SSDs, alongside a DPU (Data Processing Unit) network and storage platform.
The innovative system is designed to support configurations of either 24 or 36 SSDs, which can yield up to 1.105 petabytes of raw capacity with 30.71 terabyte SSDs. This setup allows Supermicro’s balanced network and storage I/O design to maximise throughput capabilities, reaching over 250 GB/s bandwidth for the Gen 5 SSDs and fully saturating the 400 Gb/s line rate supported by the NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU, their partner in this venture.
Supermicro has integrated the NVIDIA BlueField-3 solution into this JBOF, effectively replacing traditional storage CPU and memory subsystems by operating storage applications on the 16 Arm cores of the DPU. This integration accelerates storage operations, such as erasure coding and decompression algorithms, and also enhances networking capabilities through support for RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE), GPU Direct Storage, and GPU Initiated Storage.
Kevin Deierling, Senior Vice President of Networking at NVIDIA, expressed optimism about the collaboration, stating that the accelerated computing and AI capabilities stemming from this technology transformation deliver advantages across numerous industries. The NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs, essential to the Supermicro petascale JBOF, support crafting new AI data platforms that promise exceptional performance and efficiency.
Supermicro, in collaboration with NVIDIA, is building a new ecosystem for their JBOF product with data platform company Hammerspace and object storage supplier Cloudian. These collaborations allow for direct execution of storage infrastructure software platforms on the NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU within the Supermicro JBOF system. Supermicro has also certified SSDs from Micron and KIOXIA for their JBOF systems, offering several capacity options and single or dual port capabilities.
Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General Manager of Worldwide Infrastructure Research at IDC, commented on the new JBOF solution, noting that the integrated approach by Supermicro and NVIDIA offers a more energy-efficient alternative to CPU-based storage servers. The solution also provides reduced read latency from the direct data path facilitated by the JBOF and DPU architecture, presenting a compelling proposition for expansive AI, CSP, and HPC clientele.
Supermicro plans to present the new JBOF solution in greater detail at the upcoming OCP Global Conference in San Jose, California, scheduled to take place on 16th October. Attendees can visit Supermicro at booth B21 and participate in a session themed "High Performance Data Center Storage using DPUs" for comprehensive insights into the product's capabilities.
Founded and headquartered in San Jose, Supermicro remains committed to delivering innovative IT infrastructure solutions for Enterprise, Cloud, AI, and 5G Telco/Edge applications. The firm is known for its comprehensive line of server, AI, storage, IoT, and switch systems, alongside supporting software services. Supermicro’s commitment to green computing is reflected in their strategic designs and production processes, underscoring their dedication to sustainability in technological advancements.
Source: Noah Wire Services