Xilinx and Samsung launch the first flexible computing storage drive

   Xilinx (Xilinx, Inc, (NASDAQ: XLNX)) and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced the launch of the Samsung SmartSSD® Computing Storage Drive (CSD). The SmartSSD CSD based on Xilinx FPGA is the industry's first flexible computing storage platform that can provide the performance, customization, and scalability required for data-intensive applications.

    SmartSSD CSD is a flexible programmable memory platform that developers can use to create a variety of unique scalable accelerators to solve a series of problems faced by data centers. It can help a new generation of software developers to easily build innovative hardware acceleration solutions in familiar high-level languages. For applications such as database management, video processing, artificial intelligence layer, complex search, and virtualization, SmartSSD CSD can increase its data processing performance by 10 times or more.

    Pej Roshan, vice president of marketing for Xilinx’s Data Center Division, said: “Data processing is the key to value. SmartSSD CSD enables a wide range of ic chips novice developers to fully utilize the advantages of computing and storage and quickly launch amazing applications to solve There are many thorny challenges facing data centers. From transparent compression to next-generation AI inference acceleration, SmartSSD CSD is very powerful. Without it, it is impossible for developers to think of."

    Jim Elliott, Senior Vice President of Memory Sales and Marketing of Samsung Semiconductor, said: “The industry is increasingly aware of the super power of SmartSSD CSD in improving the performance of data centers and even more applications, and with the advent of Xilinx’s latest application development tools , We expect a large number of accelerated applications will explode."

   SmartSSD CSD integrates Xilinx FPGA accelerators, making high-speed computing closer to the location of the data, thus bypassing the limitations of the server CPU. Reducing data migration can reduce latency and power consumption, thereby speeding up data processing and efficiency. SmartSSD CSD enables enterprises to meet the needs of users for faster access to data without being forced to purchase more servers to cause capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating costs (OPEX) to rise. In addition, the host CPU resources are released, and other higher-level tasks can be processed more efficiently.

Xilinx's flexible platform

   The SmartSSD CSD platform is designed to easily create customized applications by using the Vitis unified software platform and acceleration library. With pre-built custom applications, both developers and enterprise application vendors can accelerate the listing process. The runtimes, libraries, APIs, and drivers in the Vitis platform can all be built into the system using common high-level languages (such as C, C++, and OpenCL).

In addition, Xilinx also introduced a high-performance, easy-to-deploy data encryption solution based on dm-crypt. By using standard Linux kernel modules, SmartSSD CSD developers can use the Vitis library to create turnkey acceleration applications, and these applications can be easily extended across multiple SmartSSD CSDs.

Turnkey accelerated applications

     Xilinx ecosystem partners have developed a series of attractive turnkey applications that can provide data processing acceleration for services such as big data analysis, video transcoding, and search in storage.

Representative acceleration solutions include:

1. Big data/data analysis-SmartSSD CSD has a Bigstream ultra-acceleration layer, which can help customers increase the data interpretation speed by up to 10 times on the Apache Spark™ unified analysis engine used for big data processing.

2. Search within storage-Lewis Rhodes Labs (LRL) uses SmartSSD CSD to realize novel neuromorphic processing, which can search PB-level data within a few minutes, and complete a "needle in a haystack" data search in a large data lake. Compared with other solutions, the deterministic processing function of LRL can increase the query speed by up to 100 times.

3. Video file transcoding-CTAccel's pre-built SmartSSD CSD solution implements high-performance image processing, which can increase server throughput, reduce latency, and save up to 60% of video transcoding costs.

4. Transparent compression-Eideticom's NoLoadNVMe CSD can increase storage capacity by up to 10 times or even higher, and improve line-speed compression performance, improve CPU utilization, and relieve memory bandwidth pressure.

Drive specifications and availability

   SmartSSD CSD is a standard 2.5-inch (U.2) solid state drive with a power consumption as low as 25 watts. It provides 4TB of physical storage capacity, which can store up to 12TB or more data when combined with accelerated transparent compression. The internal integrated Xilinx Kintex® UltraScale+™ FPGA accelerator has 1 million system logic units and nearly 2,000 digital signal processing (DSP) chips for hardware acceleration.

   SmartSSD CSD is now accepting pre-orders. According to an agreement reached with Samsung, mass shipments will be made through Xilinx and its authorized distributors in January next year.