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Formulus Black in Partnership With Intel and Packet Host

To deliver persistent memory powered infrastructure solutions to application developers

Venture-backed start-up Formulus Black is collaborating with Intel Corporation to develop persistent memory powered infrastructure solutions for test, validation, and optimization on Packet’s cloud platform.

Designed for developers with data-intensive and latency-sensitive applications, Forsa is server software built by Formulus Black that delivers Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory with enhanced performance, capacity, availability, and usability features.

Optane DC persistent memory boosts the performance of data-intensive applications relative to fast NAND based SSDs by shortening the traditional path of data between peripheral storage and memory. Forsa further fuels the performance of Optane DC persistent memory through algorithms that optimize I/O between memory and CPU.

Based on initial testing, net result includes: 

  • Decreased CPU usage
  • More TPS/IO/s, and
  • Lower latency under maximum load conditions

We believe Intel Optane is the leading persistent memory technology in the market today and we are excited to provide software that enhances its usability, performance, and TCO for private and hybrid cloud platforms like Packet,” said Jing Xie, COO, Formulus Black.  “By combining our respective capabilities, we are making it easier for developers and IT leaders to adopt persistent memory solutions and supercharge the performance of databases, ERP systems, and custom-built data-intensive applications.

Compared to standard DDR4 DRAM, Optane DC persistent memory offers higher system capacity at lower total cost-per-gigabyte and supports data persistence, so data can be cost effectively stored in memory for faster analytics processing and query performance.

Forsa enhances the capacity limits of Optane DC persistent memory for larger datasets by enabling memory to be pooled together from multiple CPU sockets on a single system or across systems. For example, on a four-socket server, it enables memory on 4 CPU sockets to be pooled together and can further stitch memory from CPU sockets on a second server, creating memory-based storage devices with 12-24TB of capacity (assumes 512GB x 24 Optane DC persistent memory modules per server).

In addition, Forsa provides real time data reduction capabilities via a patented process called BitMarker encoding to further reduce the effective cost and increase the storage capacity of Optane DC persistent memory systems.  Based on Formulus Black’s initial seismic and genomic data testing, it can further reduce these datasets between 20-40%.

As Intel Optane DC Persistent Memory scales in the market, the industry is embracing the technology as truly transformational,” said Alper Ilkbahar, VP of non-volatile memory and storage solutions, Intel.  “The evolving software ecosystem using Optane DC persistent memory, such as Formulus Black’s Forsa, will only accelerate the pace of innovation for developers and end-users.

Due to unmatched efficiency, the number of workloads that benefit from high-performance memory-based storage is expanding rapidly. The combination of Intel Optane and Formulus Black’s Forsa is exactly what many of our most demanding users are looking for,” says Jacob Smith, CMO and co-founder, Packet Host, Inc.

For applications that require HA and fast data replication, the throughput and latency characteristics of Intel Optane DC persistent memory are complementary. For these systems, Forsa’s HA feature and built-in KVM-based hypervisor enable both workload isolation and the ability to failover mission critical applications, data, and VM profiles onto a secondary node if the first node experiences a hardware failure or sudden loss of power. In addition, Forsa’s BLINK feature enables users to backup and restore data and system settings from Optane DC persistent memory to local SSDs, or a network storage target.

Forsa also enhances Optane DC persistent memory usability with a GUI-based management console for provisioning VMs and persistent memory-based storage, and monitoring performance statistics, rather than the standard Command Line Interface (CLI).  For developers and more technically savvy users, it also provides a RESTful-API and CLI interface. As an added bonus, it brings a suite of memory-management features that are not available for standard persistent memory devices such as the ability to increase the size of persistent memory block devices that are at full capacity, create clones and snapshots, and manage persistent memory resources on multiple nodes from one management console.

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