Lightbits Labs today
introduced SuperSSD, the industry's first scalable, Ethernet-attached
SSD solution that specifically addresses the data storage speed,
capacity and reliability needs of artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning (ML) training systems. SuperSSD makes storage
transparent, so applications like high-speed databases, high performance
analytics and customer engagement applications can deliver optimal user
experiences.
This latest solution from Lightbits, the company that championed the NVMe/TCP standard,
is purpose-built for fast and massive parallel access to data. The
appliance is designed to support the scale, performance and
high-availability needs of enterprises undergoing resource intensive
digital transformation. AI and ML are prime examples of applications
that historically relied on locally-stored data on direct attached
storage (DAS) with SSDs. However, as their data sets scaled to a massive
size on distributed resources, DAS solutions become ineffective,
complex to manage, costly, and potentially at risk of being a single
point of failure. These growing needs for scale, performance and
distributed access require a new type of storage system designed for
fast and massive parallel access to data.
By
virtualizing and managing a large pool of NVMe SSDs with a global flash
translation layer (GFTL), SuperSSD ensures efficient storage
utilization and wire-speed access to very large data sets. Deployed
using existing network and compute infrastructures, SuperSSD is seamless
to install, allowing data scientists to easily scale their storage
reach and performance when and where they need it.
As
a plug-and-play appliance, SuperSSD offers a variety of benefits around
simplicity, performance, fault tolerance and cost efficiencies,
including the following:
- High Capacity: Scalable from 64TB to 1PB usable capacity (field upgradeable) that can be shared across multiple compute nodes.
- High
Performance: Supporting up to 5 million 4K input/output operations per
second (IOPs) and with a latency consistency of less than 200us with
end-to-end NVMe
- Connectivity: Dual 100GbE wire-speed performance
- Compression:
4X data reduction or greater at line rate, increasing usable storage
capacity while enhancing SSD endurance and accelerating write-intensive
applications.
- Fault tolerant: Elastic Erasure Coding (EC) isolates SSD failures, ensuring data protection and no service interruption.
- Offload Application Server: Fully offloads all the storage tasks from the application server.
- Computational
Storage: Provides in-storage processing so that user-defined functions
can run in the storage server to maximize storage bandwidth and improve
application performance.
- NVMe/TCP
Simplicity: Uses standard TCP/IP network infrastructure for immediate
shared storage supporting many applications and compute nodes.
- Form Factor: 2U Standard Rack Server with simple plug-and-play installation
"Although
it is rarely the center of the story, storage is a key infrastructure
element that enables AI and machine learning," said Avigdor Willenz,
Founder and Chairman of the Lightbits Labs Board of Directors. "By
making fast and massive access to data available everywhere and much
simpler from start to finish, Lightbits' SuperSSD enters the AI market
as a true storage and data infrastructure game changer."
"AI
and machine learning are exceedingly resource intensive, involving
access to distributed devices and massive amounts of data," said Eran
Kirzner, Lightbits Labs CEO
and Co-Founder. "As the amount of data analyzed increases, DAS
solutions become completely ineffective, complex to manage, costly and
potentially a single point of failure. By ensuring zero downtime,
SuperSSD is the only storage solution that can support continuous AI and
machine learning processes, reliably, cost-effectively, and with
high-performance and simplicity."
The
Lightbits Labs SuperSSD appliance is available for purchase now, along
with the two pioneering NVMe/TCP solutions Lightbits introduced last
month: LightOS software and the LightField storage acceleration card.