FMS: From NGD Systems, 16 Flash Channel ASIC-Based Computational Storage

NGD Systems, Inc. announced its Newport platform for next-generation computational storage devices.

Balancing maximum capacity with low power consumption, optimized physical footprint, and matched performance in storage controllers has always been difficult. The Newport platform represents the first 16 flash channel ASIC-based computational storage solution that provides in-situ processing with NVMe 1.3 PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 storage performance in a variety of form factors including M.2 and EDSFF that do not suffer from performance due to power throttling like other architectures.

Dr. Jae Young Do, researcher, Microsoft Research, said: “Enabling computational storage for the mass market while still meeting storage and computing performance requirements mandates fitting it into the latest storage device form factors and power envelopes. NGD Systems’ Newport 64-bit Linux platform with computational storage will accelerate scale-out image similarity search applications thanks to its complete software stack and support for container virtualization. This promises a new level of density for computational storage that will be important for a variety of markets, beyond just AI, like IoT, edge and fog computing, and big data.“

While computational storage solutions have been developed in other forms and products, these platforms almost always represented tradeoffs, often between storage performance and computational storage implementation. The Newport platform provides a programming model that eliminates these tradeoffs, allowing computational storage to ‘cross the chasm’ and enter mainstream market use cases.

“Computational storage represents a paradigm shift in analytics for petabyte-scale data sets,” said Nader Salessi, CEO, NGD. “Our next-generation Newport platform enables computational storage to ‘cross the chasm’ from a niche use case to broad market adoption. In doing so, the Newport platform further enables near-data processing for real-time analytics on large-scale data sets with improved power and density, both in watts per terabyte and terabytes per cubic inch.“

The Newport platform builds upon the company’s Catalina-2 family of computational storage devices. Applications developed for Catalina-2 are compatible with the Newport platform, allowing existing customers to take advantage of Newport’s capabilities with zero risk. It will be productized with the only NVMe SSD available to support 16 flash channels in the M.2 and EDSFF form factors, providing these devices with the same bandwidth that U.2 and add-in cards currently provide, eliminating the power/performance trade-off faced by currently available solutions.

The company will be showcasing the Newport platform and computational storage solutions at Flash Memory Summit, Aug 7-9, in Santa Clara, CA, at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

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