HGST And Mellanox Show Off SAN Fabric Backed By Phase Change Memory

Stefan Mileschin · 16th August 2015, 15:13

It seems that NAND flash memory just isn't fast enough to show off the full performance of the latest datacenter networking equipment from Mellanox. They teamed up with HGST at Flash Memory Summit to demonstrate a Storage Area Network (SAN) setup that used Phase Change Memory to attain speeds that are well out of reach of any flash-based storage system.

Last year at FMS, HGST showed a PCIe card with 2GB of Micron's Phase Change Memory (PCM). That drive used a custom protocol to achieve lower latency than possible with NVMe: it could complete a 512-byte read in about 1-1.5µs, and delivered about 3M IOPS for queued reads. HGST hasn't said how the PCM device in this year's demo differs, if at all. Instead, they're exploring what kind of performance is possible when accessing the storage remotely. Their demo has latency of less than 2µs for 512-byte reads and throughput of 3.5GB/s using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Mellanox InfiniBand equipment. By comparison, NAND flash reads take tens of microseconds without counting any protocol overhead.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9529/h...-change-memory

16th August 2015, 15:13	#1
Stefan Mileschin [M] Reviewer Join Date: May 2010 Location: Romania Posts: 148,618	HGST And Mellanox Show Off SAN Fabric Backed By Phase Change Memory It seems that NAND flash memory just isn't fast enough to show off the full performance of the latest datacenter networking equipment from Mellanox. They teamed up with HGST at Flash Memory Summit to demonstrate a Storage Area Network (SAN) setup that used Phase Change Memory to attain speeds that are well out of reach of any flash-based storage system. Last year at FMS, HGST showed a PCIe card with 2GB of Micron's Phase Change Memory (PCM). That drive used a custom protocol to achieve lower latency than possible with NVMe: it could complete a 512-byte read in about 1-1.5µs, and delivered about 3M IOPS for queued reads. HGST hasn't said how the PCM device in this year's demo differs, if at all. Instead, they're exploring what kind of performance is possible when accessing the storage remotely. Their demo has latency of less than 2µs for 512-byte reads and throughput of 3.5GB/s using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) over Mellanox InfiniBand equipment. By comparison, NAND flash reads take tens of microseconds without counting any protocol overhead. http://www.anandtech.com/show/9529/h...-change-memory

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
A Google-backed startup wants to change VR as we know it	Stefan Mileschin	WebNews	0	20th January 2015 07:08
Jort Phase change	leeghoofd	Hardware Overclocking and Case Modding	9	17th December 2012 23:21
Micron Announces Availability of Phase Change Memory for Mobile Devices	Stefan Mileschin	WebNews	0	19th July 2012 07:23
Phase change memory breakthrough could lead to gigahertz-plus data transfers	Stefan Mileschin	WebNews	0	25th June 2012 08:23
Numonyx reveals Phase Change Memory [PCM] devices	jmke	WebNews	0	23rd April 2010 12:46
Phase change memory is another step closer	jmke	WebNews	0	2nd November 2009 12:41
Intel to Sample Phase Change Memory This Year	jmke	WebNews	1	9th March 2007 11:22
Experiments with phase change cooling on GPU Memory	jmke	WebNews	0	24th March 2006 10:19
Tripple Phase change Rig	jmke	WebNews	4	11th July 2004 22:25
phase change <--> cascade phase change?	kristos	General Madness - System Building Advice	20	2nd March 2004 09:30