Lightbits Labs introduced on Tuesday SuperSSD, its scalable, Ethernet-attached SSD solution that addresses 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 solution from Lightbits 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.
As a plug-and-play appliance, SuperSSD offers a variety of benefits around simplicity, performance, fault tolerance and cost efficiencies. It is scalable from 64TB to 1PB usable capacity (field upgradeable) that can be shared across multiple compute nodes; supports 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; provides dual 100GbE wire-speed performance; with four times data reduction or greater at line rate, increasing usable storage capacity while enhancing SSD endurance and accelerating write-intensive applications.
The SSD also includes Elastic Erasure Coding (EC) that isolates SSD failures, ensuring data protection and no service interruption; fully offloads all the storage tasks from the application server; provides in-storage processing so that user-defined functions can run in the storage server to maximize storage bandwidth and improve application performance; uses standard TCP/IP network infrastructure for immediate shared storage supporting many applications and compute nodes; and includes 2U standard rack server with simple plug-and-play installation.
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.
“Accessing massive amounts of data with low latency is a priority for deep learning, artificial intelligence and high performance analytics workloads,” said Roger Peene, vice president of product planning and strategy for Micron’s Storage Business Unit. “Solutions like Lightbits Labs’ SuperSSD can enable customers to access large data sets with rich data services in a low-latency, disaggregated infrastructure solution.”
“Solutions built around the speed and efficiency of NVMe over TCP offer frictionless disaggregation for companies needing scalable storage. Based on our deep familiarity with the founding team and their outstanding track record, Dell Technologies Capital is excited to be an investor supporting Lightbits Labs,” said Yair Snir, vice president and managing director, Dell Technologies Capital.
“We expect data-intensive applications such as AI and machine learning to drive increased use of high-performance storage to ingest and process the associated large data sets,” said Dennis Hahn, senior analyst, cloud and data center research practice at IHS Markit. “In our recent DC Storage Strategies Survey, respondents indicated they are seeking choices and options in the way they deploy their storage solutions. Clearly, enterprises see the need for high performance and low-latency storage that is scalable and easily accessible for applications, where storage is accessed without the need for server software additions.”
“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 NVMe/TCP solutions Lightbits introduced last month: LightOS software and the LightField storage acceleration card.
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