How GPU-accelerated storage is solving the bottlenecks that could cripple your AI investments

We're living through an AI infrastructure gold rush, and frankly, most organizations are doing it wrong. While companies pour hundreds of thousands into GPU servers, they're making a mistake that could cost them everything: ignoring storage infrastructure.

Here's a sobering reality check from our recent briefing with Graid Technology at the 62nd Edition of the IT Press Tour in San Francisco. Organizations invest massive budgets in cutting-edge GPUs while treating storage like an afterthought. Yet most AI deployments still rely on RAID 0 configurations, which offer zero data protection. One drive failure, and your entire system goes offline.

The irony is almost painful. But here's where things get interesting: a new category of GPU-accelerated storage is emerging that could change everything. And according to NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, "all storage will be GPU-accelerated" in the future.

The Million-Dollar Storage Problem

Let me paint you a picture of what's happening in data centers right now. Tom Paquette, SVP & GM of Americas & EMEA at Graid Technology, puts it bluntly: "I think what people deploying AI fear the most is that their GPUs are sitting there idle because they made such a big investment in these GPUs."

The numbers are staggering. Enterprise organizations are investing 350,000 to 400,000 per GPU server, yet they're protecting that investment with storage configurations that would make a seasoned IT administrator wince. Most deployments use RAID 0-which Paquette describes with characteristic directness: "My description of RAID zero is zero RAID."

"When an NVMe drive fails-and they will fail, that's just the nature of NVMe drives-the entire system has to get taken offline," Paquette explains. The recovery process involves finding the last good checkpoint, replacing the drive, and bringing everything back up. Meanwhile, those expensive GPUs sit there doing nothing.

The situation becomes even more pressing when you consider that enterprise IT budgets are already being consumed by data disaster recovery concerns, while executives report that current data solutions aren't flexible enough for their needs.

Enter GPU-Accelerated Storage: A Technical Game-Changer

Traditional storage solutions weren't designed for the demands of modern AI infrastructure. Hardware RAID controllers create bottlenecks that prevent NVMe drives from reaching their full potential. Software RAID solutions consume precious CPU resources that could be better used for other tasks.

But what if you could offload storage management to the same GPUs powering your AI workloads?

That's exactly what Graid Technology has figured out. Their SupremeRAID technology uses a time division multiplexing approach to leverage existing GPU infrastructure for storage acceleration. The elegant part? It consumes only 6 streaming multiprocessors (SMs) out of the 144 available on an NVIDIA H100 GPU.

"We take up 6 SMs. And by the way, in low IO, we can go to sleep and give you back all 6," Paquette notes. This means the storage acceleration happens transparently, without impacting AI workload performance.

The results speak for themselves. SupremeRAID AE (AI Edition) delivers over 95% of raw NVMe performance while providing enterprise-grade RAID protection. Compare that to traditional solutions that often bottleneck at much lower performance levels.

The Intelligence Behind the Architecture

Here's where things get really clever. SupremeRAID AE includes what Graid calls an "Intelligent Data Offload Engine." When the system detects low I/O activity-say, when GPUs are processing a dataset without requiring frequent storage access-the storage kernel can actually go to sleep, returning full GPU capacity to AI workloads.

"If we're not seeing a whole lot of IO coming through on the NVMe drives and the GPUs are just cranking away on that dataset, we can put our kernel to sleep on the GPU to give the GPU full compute capacity to do its work," Paquette explains.

This isn't just storage acceleration; it's intelligent resource management. The system adapts in real-time to workload demands, ensuring AI applications get maximum performance when they need it most.

NVIDIA Validation: When Industry Giants Take Notice

Sometimes the best validation comes from unexpected sources. Paquette shares a telling anecdote about how NVIDIA discovered Graid's technology: "After our IT Press Tour last time, one of the articles happened to hit Jensen's desk. And he read it and said, 'What is this?' He got some of his people and said, 'Go figure out what this is and figure out what we need to do to help these guys be successful.'"

That attention led to Graid's inclusion in NVIDIA's "Storage Next" initiative, where they're positioned alongside industry heavyweights like NetApp, Dell, Samsung, and Hitachi. For a relatively young company, that's remarkable validation.

The partnership has evolved beyond basic recognition. Graid is now part of NVIDIA's strategic 50 startups program, selected because they're "doing things with their products that no one else is even thinking about," according to Paquette.

This validation becomes even more meaningful when you consider NVIDIA's broader AI infrastructure vision. As Paquette notes, "GPU-accelerated platforms can reduce AI training time by up to 20x," while "systems using NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage see up to 95% of raw NVMe performance delivered."

VMblog predicts that Graid's automatic performance scaling with each new PCIe generation-without requiring code changes-positions them uniquely for long-term success. As PCIe 5.0 and 6.0 adoption accelerates, customers will see exponential performance gains from their existing investments, creating natural expansion opportunities.

Future-Proofing Through PCIe Evolution

Here's something fascinating about GPU-accelerated storage: it gets better automatically. Because the only bottleneck in current implementations is PCIe infrastructure, each new PCIe generation delivers exponential performance improvements without requiring any code changes.

"Each incremental increase in PCIe just opens up the floodgates," Paquette observes. Moving from PCIe 4 to PCIe 5 to PCIe 6 means automatic performance doubling with each generation. Compare that to traditional storage solutions that require hardware upgrades and architectural changes to benefit from new technologies.

This architectural approach means organizations making storage investments today won't face obsolescence as data center technologies evolve. Instead, they'll see continuous performance improvements as their infrastructure naturally upgrades.

Real-World Deployment Success

The validation isn't just coming from NVIDIA. Federal agencies are deploying the technology for mission-critical applications. The US Department of Defense has installed over 60 SupremeRAID systems for high-performance edge computing requirements.

"They had a requirement for what they called 'military-grade journaling'," Paquette recalls. After reviewing the technology's journaling features, "they said, 'That's exactly what we need.'"

Dell Technologies has also validated SupremeRAID for their PowerEdge servers, with SKUs now available through their system configurator. Super Micro has been integrating the technology for years, and their sales teams are now seeing deals for hundreds of licenses at a time rather than the single-digit quantities from earlier years.

"Now we're seeing 100 licenses, 250 licenses, 900 licenses," Paquette notes, highlighting how the technology is scaling from pilot projects to enterprise-wide deployments.

The Economics of Protection

Let's talk numbers for a moment. Graid has achieved 5x revenue growth from 2022 to 2024, with projected revenue of $15 million in 2025. They've deployed the equivalent of more than 5,000 units last year alone, with projections to exceed 7,000 units this year.

But the real economics story is what happens when you don't have proper storage protection. During our IT Press Tour briefing, Paquette emphasized the mindset driving adoption: "For my business, the scariest thing you can say to me is 'Your GPUs are sitting idle.'" That's the perspective driving enterprise investment decisions-protecting massive GPU investments rather than just improving performance.

The company's growth trajectory reflects this market demand. With 42% headcount growth in the Americas and 83% growth in EMEA, Graid is scaling rapidly to meet global demand for GPU-accelerated storage solutions.

Looking Ahead: The Infrastructure Shift

We're witnessing a fundamental change in how data centers approach storage architecture. The traditional separation between compute and storage is blurring as GPUs become multi-purpose engines handling compute, storage, and even networking tasks.

This shift has implications beyond just performance improvements. It represents a move toward more efficient resource utilization, reduced hardware complexity, and simplified management overhead. When storage acceleration becomes a software function running on existing GPU infrastructure, it changes the economics of data center design.

Hyperscalers are taking notice. As Paquette mentions, "Meta, Tesla-those guys are Super Micro customers. So by default, yes, we're talking to those guys now." As these type of deployments become more public, they expect to see enterprise adoption accelerate rapidly.

The Storage Revolution is Here

Jensen Huang's prediction about GPU-accelerated storage isn't just visionary thinking-it's becoming market reality. When you can achieve 95% of raw NVMe performance while providing enterprise-grade protection using existing GPU infrastructure, the value proposition becomes compelling.

The early adopter phase is ending. Federal agencies, major financial institutions, and tier-one OEMs are already deploying these solutions at scale. The question isn't whether GPU-accelerated storage will become mainstream-it's how quickly organizations will adapt to this new infrastructure paradigm.

For IT professionals planning AI infrastructure investments, the message from our San Francisco briefing is clear: storage protection isn't optional anymore. The cost of getting it wrong-idle GPUs, failed deployments, lost business opportunities-far exceeds the cost of getting it right from the start.

As Paquette puts it: "We don't accelerate anything. We take the bottlenecks away."

Sometimes the most powerful innovations are the simplest ones.

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