CRN Poland: SupremeRAID™ enables maximum performance for HPC (High-Performance Computing) systems

"Many interesting, alternative concepts are emerging in the world of mass storage. For example, SupremeRAID™ enables maximum performance from Flash NAND media even for very high loads carried out by all-flash arrays or HPC (High-Performance Computing) systems."

(Wojciech Urbanek for CRN Poland / Feb. 19, 2024)

RAID for SSDs
The RAID concept was born in 1987, when no one was thinking about SSD media yet. This mechanism has proven to be a solid protection against disk failure for many years. However, in recent years, the mechanical drives for which RAID was developed have been replaced in data centers by NAND Flash memories. . According to Gartner, in 2021 their quantitative share in the disk array segment was 21 percent, and in 2026 it is to be 32 percent. Unfortunately, RAID and SSD are not a good pair, because the old technology limits the performance of fast media. Some people try to solve this problem using special software, but it uses about 30 percent. CPU resources.

The American startup Graid Technology has introduced the SupremeRAID™ controller to the market, enabling maximum performance from Flash NAND media even for very high loads carried out by all-flash arrays or HPC (High-Performance Computing) systems. The company, encouraged by the commercial success of SupremeRAID SR-1010 and SR-1000 for Cloud & Enterprise Servers, developed another product that debuted on the market in January this year: SupremeRAID™ SR-1001 for Tower & Edge Servers, Professional Workstations, & Gaming Desktops.

– In conversations with customers, it turned out that their needs go beyond the data center. It turned out that they were looking for similar solutions for workstations. This is how the idea of ​​developing a special card supporting up to 8 NVMe SSD drives in an office computer was born - says Thomas Paquette, CEO of Graid.

According to Graid's tests, the new card achieves 6 million read IOPS and 80 GB/s throughput and 500,000 write IOPS and 30 GB/s throughput. For comparison, a machine that entrusts its RAID to its own main processor is capped at 2 million read IOPS and 59 GB/s and 200,000 write IOPS with a throughput of 2 GB/s.

Read the full article here.