Flash Memory Summit 2022: 12 Cool Flash Storage Products

Here’s a look at some of the latest flash storage technologies introduced at this week’s Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference that will be impacting the storage industry for some time to come.

Full Speed Ahead

The Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference, held this week, is a showcase for the latest in flash storage technology. The conference, also known by its “FMS” acronym, brought together developers of a wide range of memory technologies including NAND Flash, DRAM, MRAM, ReRAM, and DNA storage, as well as flash drives and complete flash storage systems based on those technologies.

High-performance flash storage is a big business. Analyst firm Research and Markets this year estimated the global all-flash array market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 25 percent from 2021 to 2026, rising from an estimated $18.0 billion in 2021 to $54.9 billion in 2026. Meanwhile, Research and Markets estimates that the world flash memory market will grow at a CAGR of 4.9 percent through 2025 to reach a total value of $80 billion.

While the top of the flash storage chain is dominated by such storage vendors as NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a lot of the development is carried out at the component level, which includes companies as well known as Seagate and Kioxia as well as a large number of relatively unknown companies who develop their technologies in relative obscurity. Many of those smaller companies used FMS 2022 to bring attention to their flash memory and flash storage component and software capabilities.

Whether you attended the Flash Memory Summit 2022 or not, there was plenty of new technology to consider. CRN is offering a look at what 12 companies, big and small, are doing to help improve the performance and lower the cost of flash storage.

BittWare PCIe 5.0/CXL FPGA Accelerators

Concord, N.H.-based BittWare, a Molex company, used the Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference to introduce new card-level and server-level technologies featuring Intel Agilex FPGAs. The new BittWare IA-860m is aimed at helping customers alleviate memory-bound application workloads by leveraging up to 32 GBs of HBM2e in-package memory and 16-lanes of PCIe 5.0 (with CXL upgrade option).

BittWare also added new Intel Agilex I-Series FPGA-based products with the introduction of the IA-440i and IA-640i accelerators, which support high-performance interfaces, including 400G Ethernet and PCIe 5.0 (CXL option).

IBM Elastic Storage System 3500

The IBM ESS 3500, which IBM introduced in May, takes advantage of IBM Spectrum Scale unstructured data storage management software to provide enterprise-class security and availability with a global namespace supporting the unification of data from multiple sources across core, edge and cloud without the need to make additional copies of data. The technology is aimed at helping clients accelerate data science, modernize and optimize application development, simplify and accelerate DevOps, and optimize content repositories.

Infinidat InfiniBox SSA II

Waltham, Mass.-based Infinidat used the Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference to show off its InfiniBox SSA II. Originally introduced in May, the InfiniBox SSA II is Infinidat’s next-generation solid state array for applications needing high performance, guaranteed 100-percent availability, and cyber resilience. The array delivers 35 microseconds of latency, which the company said lets businesses have optimal real-world application and workload performance, substantial storage consolidation, increased efficiency, and lower total cost. The new technology utilizes 100-percent solid state technology coupled with low latency, a Neural Cache, and autonomous automation to improve performance. It also incorporates Infinidat’s InfiniSafe technology to provide enterprise storage cyber resilience.

Kioxia CM7 Series E3.S Enterprise NVMe SSDs

The Kioxia CM7 family of enterprise NVME SSDs from San Jose, Calif.-based Kioxia America are optimized for the needs of high-performance, highly efficient servers and storage. The Kioxia CM7 family is designed with PCIe 5.0 technology in enterprise and data center standard form factor (EDSFF) E3.S and 2.5-inch form factors. CM7 drives provide 14 gigabytes-per-second read throughput, helping them target applications that need high performance from the underlying storage stack such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics.

MemVerge Memory Machine Cloud Edition

The Memory Machine Cloud Edition software from Milpitas, Calif.-based MemVerge uses the company’s patented ZeroIO memory snapshot technology and cloud service orchestration to transparently checkpoint long-running applications and allow customers to safely use low-cost spot instances. The company says it can help businesses reduce cloud costs by up to 70 percent. Over time, Memory Machine Cloud Edition will form the basis of an infrastructure cloud service to let stateful, no-fault-tolerant, and long-running apps such as big data analytics, HPC simulations, genome sequencing, and graphics rendering run across multi-cloud environments.

Phison X1 Controller-based SSD Platform

NAND flash controller and storage technology developer Phison Electronics used the Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference to unveil the launch of its X1 controller-based SSD platform, which the Taiwan-based company said delivers the industry’s most advanced enterprise SSD solution. The X1 SSD platform was designed in partnership with SSD manufacturer Seagate Technology. The X1 SSD customizable platform aims to improve quality of service and eliminate storage bottlenecks while reducing energy consumption, and offers a 30-percent-plus increase in data reads compared to existing competitive technologies for the same power used for high performance computing, AI, and hyperscale data centers, the company said.

Pliops Extreme Data Processor (XDP)

Pliops, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based developer of data processors for cloud and enterprise data centers, used the Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference to showcase its Extreme Data Processor (XDP) technology. The Pliops XDP manages data flow from applications to storage to help accelerate applications and increase data center efficiency. The company claims the Pliops XDP offers up to 12 times the performance of hardware RAID 5, with rebuilds up to five times faster while increasing SSD lifespans by up to seven times. The company brought multiple strategic partners to the conference to demonstrate products using the XPD including AMD, Samsung, Solidigm and Western Digital.

Samsung Memory-semantic SSD

Samsung used the Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference to introduce its new ‘Memory-semantic SSD,’ which the company said combines the benefits of storage and DRAM memory. Memory-semantic SSDs take advantage of Compute Express Link (CXL) interconnect technology and a built-in DRAM cache to gain up to a 20-times improvement in both random read speed and latency when used with AI and machine learning applications. It is optimized to read and write small-sized data chunks at high speeds, which Samsung said makes it ideal for AI and machine learning workloads.

ScaleFlux CSD 3000

ScaleFlux, based in San Jose, Calif., used the Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference to unveil its 3000-series suite of products based on its new System-on-Chip (SoC) Storage Processor, the ScaleFlux SFX 3000. The new CSD 3000 processors are fully compatible with NVMe, so no new drivers or application development are required for its use. This new line of products includes the CSD 3000 series NVMe Computational Storage Drives, NSD 3000 series NVMe SSDs, and the SFX 3000 storage processing SoC. ScaleFlux says the 3000-series SSDs can increase performance through increased capacity density without adding complexity for high-performance workloads.

Solidigm P41 Plus

Solidigm, the San Jose, Calif.-based SSD startup spun out of Intel to SK Hynix, launched its first branded SSD, the Solidigm P41 Plus, at the Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference. The Solidigm P41 Plus is a PCIe 4.0 SSD targeting everyday use cases, including productivity and gaming. The M.2 form factor SSD features 144-layer 3D NAND, and offers up to 4,125 Mbytes per second sequential read speed. It is available in capacities of 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB.

Supermicro Petascale All-Flash Server

The Petascale all-flash server from San Jose, Calif.-based Supermicro is a next-generation, dual-processor platform supporting high-performance E1.S NVMe storage in 9.5mm and 15mm form factors to provide a density of up to 1 petabyte in 1U. It features the latest industry standards including PCI-E 5.0 and DDR5 for maximum throughput and performance. The high-density, high-performance device is aimed at mission-critical database, big data, high performance computing, machine learning, monitoring and evaluation, content delivery network, and hot-tier caching workloads.

Swissbit PCIe-SSD N-30m2

The high-performance PCIe-SSD series N-30m2 from Bronschhofen, Switzerland was officially introduced to the U.S. market premiere at Flash Memory Summit 2022 conference. The series is available as a compact PCIe module with capacities of up to four terabytes. The company claims that its performance is very suitable for the most demanding industrial and NetCom applications. The series will also be available with Swissbit‘s latest Powersafe extended PLP (Power Loss Protection) feature.