Data Backup Digest

There's no question that the world of data storage is in the midst of a revolution. Between the widespread embrace of solid-state drives to the explosive popularity of cloud-based storage, there's no shortage of options when it comes to saving your data. However, there are some limitations; restrictions that also seem to be evolving over time.

Faster Throughput than Ever Before

Data throughput speeds have always been a concern when it comes to transferring information between digital mediums. While there are several different factors that ultimately affect transfer rates, IBM is hoping to make things even faster than ever before – and they're banking on Nvidia to help them achieve this.

Their solution comes in the form of a brand new server, dubbed IBM SpectrumAI with Nvidia DGX, that effectively achieves "the highest performance in any test converged system" at 120 GB/s.

Eric Herzog, vice president of product marketing and management with IBM storage systems, spoke about the needs for greater transfer speeds, scalability and more by saying: "It’s important that it be able to grow. IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Cloud Object Storage have, in production today, installations of more than an exabyte. And both of them can scale to multi-exabyte configurations. In fact, this reference architecture is spec’ed up to a capacity of 8 exabytes – not counting the archive side, just counting the primary storage side. So it lets you create giants sets needed for AI. AI is mimicking what we do from a human perspective and allows this vast amount of data to be absorbed."

IBM SpectrumAI with Nvidia DGX also benefits from the fact that it's not tied to one specific cloud service provider or another – it's compatible with many different storage platforms that range from next-gen cloud architectures to traditional, tape-based solutions.

'''Adding to Nvidia's Growing Presence'''

While the announcement of IBM SpectrumAI with Nvidia DGX is enough to make headlines on its own, IBM isn't alone in their interest of Nvidia. In fact, the Pure Storage made news as the first storage vendor to partner with Nvidia back in April 2018. The team released the AI-Ready Infrastructure, or AIRI platform.

NetApp soon followed with their own Nvidia-sponsored product – the NetApp Ontap AI. Nvidia has also launched the DGX-Ready Data Center initiative to help data centers locate and secure services in their region. The program already includes many different data center operators in North America alone, including the likes of CyrusOne, Scale Matrix, Switch, Aligned Energy, Core Scientific, and more.

All of these developments will only solidify Nvidia's presence amongst the data storage niche. Although their data center business failed to meet expectations for Q4 2018, the team is confident that their recent partnerships will help strengthen their presence in 2019 and beyond.

To find out more information on Nvidia, including details on IBM SpectrumAI with Nvidia DGX, insight into recent developments or late-breaking news, please visit their official website at www.nvidia.com. For more information on IBM, head over to their official website at www.ibm.com.