Kingston Technology releases NVMe SSD QoS benchmarks for HPC architectures

Kingston Digital Inc., a flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, demonstrated on Wednesday its server DRAM and latest NVMe PCIe Flash solutions for high performance computing (HPC) at Supercomputing 2019 (SC19). Supercomputing is an international conference that brings together the high-performance computing community. 

Kingston will demonstrate the consistent data performance and reliability of its forthcoming DC1000M U.2 NVMe SSD, purpose-built for data-intensive enterprise workloads and HPC architectures at the forefront of new artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications.

During SC19, Kingston and Madison Cloud will demonstrate Private MultiCloud Storage (PMCS) architecture, providing a unified storage fabric for cloud and on-premise installations. 

Designed to keep data close to the Cloud without actually putting it in the Cloud, PMCS deploys the same storage platform wherever you are, providing the products and support that system builders need to move at the speed of Cloud. The two companies will showcase how users can run real-time MultiCloud workloads from a PMCS server in a MultiCloud architecture, built with Kingston DRAM, SATA and NVMe SSDs, providing consistent performance and a wide range of enterprise class features compared to cloud-native storage products.

Kingston will further demonstrate specific architectural advancements for Big Data and ML applications with the upcoming DC1000M U.2 NVMe SSD and recently launched DC500 SATA data center SSDs. 

The big data workflows validate possibilities for 10-bay NVMe server configurations while delivering 5.8 million IOPS at a sustained bandwidth of 23.8Gb/s. Kingston’s third demo presents ML application learning by naming thousands of satellite images per second as the DC1000M alleviates storage bottlenecks, accelerates large data sets and optimizes NVIDIA GPU performance for ML.

“Today’s supercomputers are powering a multitude of applications that are at the forefront of progress ― from oil and gas exploration to weather predictions, financial markets to developing new technologies,” said Keith Schimmenti, enterprise SSD business manager, Kingston. “These HPC applications require far greater consistency of performance and IO delivery. We are proud to share how Kingston’s solutions are an integral part of the stack behind the next breakthroughs in computing, providing the performance required in the world’s most extreme computing environments and applications.”

BittWare, Achronix introduce enterprise-class PCIe accelerator product featuring 7nm Speedster7t FPGA

BittWare, a Molex company, has collaborated with Achronix Semiconductor to introduce the S7t-VG6 PCIe accelerator product—a feature-rich PCIe card sporting the new Achronix 7nm Speedster7t FPGA. 

This next generation product offers a range of breakthrough capabilities including low-cost and highly flexible GDDR6 memories that offer HBM-class memory bandwidth, high-performance machine learning processors and a revolutionary 2D network-on-chip for high bandwidth and energy-efficient data movement.

The S7t-VG6 offers a 7nm Achronix FPGA that is optimized for high-speed networking and fast, high-capacity memory access. Featuring a QSFP-DD (double-density) cage, the board supports up to 1x 400GbE or 4x 100GbE using the 56G PAM4-enabled Speedster 7t device. 

An additional QSFP port supports 2x 100GbE, and a 4x OCuLink connector supports NVMe attached storage. Sixteen channels of GDDR6 graphics DRAM handle high-bandwidth memory requirements, providing up to 512GB/s.

The BittWare VectorPath accelerator card is designed for high-performance and high-bandwidth data applications and features 1x400GbE and 2x100GbE interfaces; 8 banks of GDDR6 memory with 4 Tbps aggregate bandwidth; 20 Tbps 2D Network-on-Chip (NoC); 1 bank of DDR4 running at 2666MHz with ECC; PCIe compliance and certification; and 692K 6-input LUTs.

This enterprise-class product leverages BittWare’s extensive experience designing, qualifying, deploying and supporting accelerator cards. Its features include choice of thermal cooling options: passive, active or liquid; comprehensive Board Management Controller (BMC); support for Linux and Windows operating systems; developer toolkit: API, PCIe drivers, application example designs and diagnostic self-test; and option to purchase the S7t pre-integrated as a DELL or HPE server from BittWare TeraBox range.

The initial S7t-VG6 shipments are scheduled to begin by the second quarter of next year. 

Micron X100 SSD adopts 3D XPoint technology targeting storage- and memory-intensive applications for data centers

Micron Technology announced a breakthrough in nonvolatile memory technology with the introduction of its Micron X100 SSD. The Micron X100 SSD is initial solution in a family of products from Micron targeting storage- and memory-intensive applications for the data center. 

These solutions will leverage the strengths of 3D XPoint technology and usher in a new tier in the memory-to-storage hierarchy with higher capacity and persistence than DRAM, along with higher endurance and performance than NAND.

“Micron’s innovative X100 product brings the disruptive potential of 3D XPoint technology to the data center, driving breakthrough performance improvements for applications and enabling entirely new use cases,” said Micron executive vice president and chief business officer Sumit Sadana. “Micron is the only vertically-integrated provider of DRAM, NAND and 3D XPoint solutions in the world, and this product continues the evolution of our portfolio towards higher value solutions that accelerate artificial intelligence capabilities, drive faster data analytics and create new insights for our customers.”

With a combination of high bandwidth, low latency, high quality of service (QoS) and high endurance, the Micron X100 SSD provides game-changing performance for big data applications and transactional workloads. The Micron X100 SSD accelerates data center applications by delivering larger amounts of data in real time, and it dramatically increases the speed of data transactions, while maintaining predictably fast service for quicker time to insights.

The Micron X100 SSD offers up to 2.5 million input/output operations per second (IOPs), more than three times faster than today’s competitive SSD offerings; has more than 9GB/s bandwidth in read, write and mixed modes and is up to three times faster than other competitive NAND offerings; and provides consistent read-write latency that is 11 times better than NAND SSDs. 

It also enables two to four times the improvements in end-user experience for various applications with prevalent data center workloads; and eliminates the need for overprovisioning storage for performance. As the Micron X100 SSD uses the standard NVMe interface, it requires no changes to software to receive the full benefits of the product

The Micron X100 SSD will be in limited sampling with select customers this quarter.

Samsung Electronics delivers 12GB LPDDR4X-based uMCP chips aimed at smartphone users

Samsung Electronics announced Thursday  that it has begun mass producing the industry's first 12-gigabyte (GB) low-power double data rate 4X (LPDDR4X) UFS-based multichip package (uMCP). The announcement was made as part of the company’s annual Samsung Tech Day at its Device Solutions’ America headquarters in San Jose, California.

Samsung is introducing its 12GB uMCP solution just seven months after its launch of a 12GB LPDDRX package based on 16Gb DRAM. By combining four of the 24Gb LPDDR4X chips (featuring the latest 1y-nanometer process technology) and ultra-fast eUFS 3.0 NAND storage into a single package, the new mobile memory is able to break through the current 8GB package limit and provide 10+ GB memory to the broader smartphone market.

As the trend toward larger, higher-resolution smartphone displays continues to grow, more users will benefit from Samsung's uMCP solution when running data-intensive tasks or multitasking. With 1.5 times capacity of the previous 8GB package and a data transfer rate of 4,266 megabits per second (Mbps), the 12GB uMCP can support smooth 4K video recording as well as accommodate AI and machine learning features even for mid-end smartphones.

Samsung plans to rapidly expand the availability of 10+ GB LPDDR DRAM to address the increasing needs of global smartphone makers for higher-capacity memory solutions, while reinforcing its competitive edge in the memory marketplace.