Diablo Technologies To Put Flash in the Memory Channel
Diablo Technologies today introduced its Memory Channel Storage (MCS)
architecture, expected to show up in servers shipping later this year. The
architecture allows flash storage components to plug into the super-fast channel
now used to connect CPUs with memory, slashing data-access delays even more than current flash caching products that use the PCI Express bus.
Diablo's system architecture directly attaches persistent memory to the host
processors of a server or storage array. This approach utilizes the industry
standard DIMM form factor and native CPU memory interface, allowing MCS to be a
drop-in replacement for standard RDIMMs. The architecture delivers the highest,
most economical scaling of any enterprise storage solution on the market today,
the company claims, with persistent latencies approaching that of DRAM and
linear scaling of throughput with additional modules.
"Flash SSDs boost system performance, and flash over PCIe is even faster, but the best performance will come from flash on the memory channel," said Jim Handy, Director at Objective Analysis. "Diablo is on the right path by providing a way to plug flash right into the DDR memory buses on today's servers."
Configuring MCS as a traditional block storage device enables new performance levels for applications, all the while reducing latencies by more than 85% over PCI-Express based SSDs and 96% over SATA/SAS based SSDs. MCS latencies are not only significantly lower than any other flash based storage, but also provides deterministic latencies with minimal variability, allowing applications to commit data quickly and consistently.
In addition to block storage, Memory Channel Storage can also be configured to expand system memory from gigabytes to terabytes, dramatically improving the performance of large in-memory applications. This capability provides a 100x increase in accessible memory and allows the entire application data set to reside in the CPU memory space. This disruptive capability makes MCS uniquely well suited for memcached, big data analytics, and other large in-memory applications.
Memory Channel Storage is suited for database / cloud, Big Data analytics and financial applications.
The MCS components, which come in 200GB and 400GB sizes, are compatible with any standard DDR3 memory slot, allowing deployment across the full spectrum of server and storage system designs, chassis' and form-factors.
"Flash SSDs boost system performance, and flash over PCIe is even faster, but the best performance will come from flash on the memory channel," said Jim Handy, Director at Objective Analysis. "Diablo is on the right path by providing a way to plug flash right into the DDR memory buses on today's servers."
Configuring MCS as a traditional block storage device enables new performance levels for applications, all the while reducing latencies by more than 85% over PCI-Express based SSDs and 96% over SATA/SAS based SSDs. MCS latencies are not only significantly lower than any other flash based storage, but also provides deterministic latencies with minimal variability, allowing applications to commit data quickly and consistently.
In addition to block storage, Memory Channel Storage can also be configured to expand system memory from gigabytes to terabytes, dramatically improving the performance of large in-memory applications. This capability provides a 100x increase in accessible memory and allows the entire application data set to reside in the CPU memory space. This disruptive capability makes MCS uniquely well suited for memcached, big data analytics, and other large in-memory applications.
Memory Channel Storage is suited for database / cloud, Big Data analytics and financial applications.
The MCS components, which come in 200GB and 400GB sizes, are compatible with any standard DDR3 memory slot, allowing deployment across the full spectrum of server and storage system designs, chassis' and form-factors.
