High-Performance DPU Storage Accelerator Released by MaxLinear

MaxLinear

Panther III, the newest storage accelerator in the Panther series from MaxLinear (NASDAQ: MXL), has been made available. Panther III would open new opportunities within the storage market, including all-flash-array and non-volatile memory express (NVMe) systems.

Businesses may have issues with security and CAPEX expenses while needing fast access to ever-growing volumes of data. With a high throughput of 200Gbps and “extremely” low single-pass transformation latency, Panther III’s 16 nanometer (nm) DPU design would offer ground-breaking data reduction, encryption, deduplication, and data security while also setting a new benchmark in storage acceleration.

James Lougheed, VP of High Performance Analog and Accelerator products at MaxLinear
“With the rise of higher speed NVMe SSD drive deployment, software data compression and reduction techniques are no longer viable architectures,” said James Lougheed, VP of High Performance Analog and Accelerator products at MaxLinear.

Panther III would create new storage market prospects, such as those for all-flash arrays and non-volatile memory express (NVMe) systems. “Data center all-flash NVMe SSD storage arrays recently hit 58% shipment growth this past year,” said Dennis Hahn, Principal Analyst at Omdia. “NVMe enables faster storage speeds and the need for high-performance storing functionality through hardware acceleration. The data rates behind NVMe arrays are making software approaches to storing data too expensive. In conjunction with a high-growth 47%, 5-year NVMe SSD array CAGR, Omdia expects storage hardware acceleration to continue to take hold within enterprise, cloud, and white box focused data centers.”

Panther III would deliver strong data reduction technology that automatically offloads the CPU to unleash the full bandwidth potential of all storage tiers without being constrained by the CPU or software, much like earlier generations of Panther devices. In the rapidly expanding edge to disaggregated computing of the public cloud, these features would offer smarter and quicker dataset distribution, high-performance analytics, and increased workload accuracy.

Faster NVMe Access 

MaxLinear’s Panther III series can offer the storage solution with 12:1 data reduction, a comprehensive suite of security, and CAPEX cost reduction for usage in data centers while delivering ultra-reliable data protection thanks to the scalability and flexibility of the DPU architecture.

Panther III’s adaptable compression algorithms would enable quick changes in data temperature while minimizing access latency for hot, warm, and cold data. Panther class of service (CoS) and decode-only DPU transform engines are used in conjunction to prioritize traffic processing for provisioning, enforce service agreements, and give ultra-fast access to extremely hot data readings.

Panther III’s smart architecture and innovation would result in the following:

  • Faster NVMe access – Faster access to larger datasets (big data) is made possible by combining NVMe SSD drives expansion and Panther III 200Gbps speed with “extremely” low latency. This would enable greater performance data processing to produce more accurate workload results.
  • Lower capital storage expenses (CAPEX) – In order to improve de-duplication hit rates, the proprietary patent-pending MaxHash offers independent hash block size and programmable offset, which would lead to increased effective storage capacity and cost savings per gigabyte.
  • Fast system integration – The API, drivers, and source code in a feature-rich software development kit (SDK) would make it simple to integrate it with end application software and software-defined storage (SDS).
  • Meeting ‘Six Nines’ reliability – Data integrity is guaranteed, and data loss is prevented by the integrated end-to-end data protection that uses Real Time Verification (RTV) of all transformations, NVMe protection, and in-line CRCs/parity.

“Panther III comes to market at a critical inflection point for enterprise storage appliances and hyperscale data center disaggregated computing storage systems,” said James Lougheed, Vice President of High Performance Analog and Accelerator products at MaxLinear. “With the rise of higher speed NVMe SSD drive deployment, software data compression and reduction techniques are no longer viable architectures. Even existing hardware compression offload solutions lack the ability to scale. The release of Panther III elevates the product family into a class of its own, ready to address a data storage market that’s doubling its Zettabytes capacity every three years.”

Panther III will be available from MaxLinear in OCP 3.0 and PCIe adaptor cards, both of which are ready for manufacturing. The Panther III MxL8807A-EA-B is sampling now.