NGD Systems: Availability of Newport Platform for Deployment of Computational Storage Devices

NGD Systems, Inc. announced the availability of the Newport Platform for deployment of computational storage devices.

The platform offers a high capacity NVMe SSDs and leverages in-situ processing to eliminate the need for data movement to main memory prior to processing, removing a bottleneck never previously been addressed. It makes it possible to implement intelligent edge and hyperscale environments with efficiently and lower cost, providing customers a TCO benefit.

“The Newport Platform is the result of years of customer engagement and feedback, research, market observations and developing multiple previous products and Computational Storage IP to address the biggest storage pain points in intelligent edge and hyperscale environments. The Newport Platform delivers new innovation by bringing NVMe-based computational storage into the mainstream,” said Nader Salessi, CEO and co-founder, NGD. “We offer the industry’s highest capacity NVMe, smallest footprint, and the most power efficient SSDs on the market. This makes it possible for the first time to perform In-Situ processing within the storage device itself without having to trade power, space or cost to do so.“

Intelligent edge computing applications have gained major momentum recently, while hyperscale system growth has accelerated. Each offers possibilities that can transform technology. However, both rely on fundamentally old computing architectures in which all data needs to be moved between and within servers’ memory and CPU before it’s processed. This data movement causes latency, consumes power and makes it harder to scale as datasets reach petabyte size, causing major bottlenecks for intelligent edge and hyperscale systems that prioritize response time, results and scalability. Organizations first tried to mitigate this problem by adding technology like NVMeoF fabrics, composable architectures, and GPU and FPGA acceleration solutions, but these approaches increase cost, power consumption and size while they don’t address the issue of moving data before processing.

The NVMe storage solution, Newport is an ASIC-based computational storage platform. In addition, the product is also a SSD controller ASIC to be released on a 14nm process technology. It has up to 16 flash channels and delivers NVMe 1.3 PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 optimized storage performance in a variety of form factors. Today the first product is being released, the U.2, with additional form factors coming soon. Unlike other SSD storage products, the Newport Platform form factors do not suffer performance loss due to power throttling.

Product details include:

• Form factors: U.2 15mm

• Maximum raw capacity: 16TB

• Maximum active power: 12W

• Interface/protocol: PCIe Gen3 x 4; NVMe 1.3

“Modern networks, such as hyperscale and intelligent edge environments, face their biggest challenges in trying to scale,” said Don Jeanette, VP, storage research, TrendFocus. “NGD Systems’ Newport Platform solves that scalability challenge by introducing new efficiencies to these systems, which delivers a groundbreaking approach by creating computational storage NVMe SSDs. By eliminating the need to move data before processing, the Newport Platform drastically reduces latency and system level power consumption.“

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As a third-generation design, the Newport Platform offering builds upon the success of the company’s Catalina-2 and Catalina-1 families of computational storage devices. Customers deploying Catalina-2 will be able to transition to the new platform, as applications developed for Catalina-2 are compatible with the platform.