PodCast #97: NVIDIA Dives Into DPU Technology

While attending the VAST Launch event in San Jose, CA, recently, Brian was able to catch up with Rob Davis who is President of Storage Technology at the Nvidia Networking BU where he focuses on ways to apply high-speed interface technology to storage systems.

Prior to becoming a part of NVIDIA Rob served as VP of Storage Technology at Mellanox Technologies. Rob is currently leading the development and marketing for products focused on NVMe over fabrics, which will allow for the high-speed networking of PCIe-based storage. NVIDIA is a VAST Data partner and is a supplier of products for the recently announced VAST Data Ceres platform.

Rob and Brian covered a number of technologies relating to NVIDIA and how they fit into the VAST Data architecture. With data storage and retrieval a huge topic today, much of the conversation focused on DPUs. Rob also brought up NVIDIA converged accelerators, a product that combines the power of the NVIDIA Ampere architecture with the enhanced security and networking capabilities of the NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPU. This advanced architecture delivers unprecedented performance and strong security for AI-powered workloads in edge computing, telecommunications, and network security.

NVIDIA DPU in the Vast Data Ceres Node

If you are interested in how NVIDIA is working with VAST Data to deliver Ceres, this is a great place to land. The related discussions around BlueField-2 DPU and converged accelerators, and how technologies are trying to catch up with the demands from data storage and retrieval.

It is a short podcast, but if you want to skip around, the timestamps are below.

00:00 Brian intro from VAST Data in San Jose
- DPU Progression Summary
- How the DPU fits with the GPU
- Technology is catching up
- DGX Server
05:00 Impact of cooling demands
- Supermicro servers
- Liquid cooling and other partners are doing
- Data evolution
- AI is driving data retention
  - Autonomous Autos
10:00 Data ingestion
- Analytics plays an important role
- Transferring data
- Keeping GPUs busy
15:00 Importance of the DPU
- Storage acceleration
- JBOF discussion
- CPU usage becomes minimalized
- Intro to VAST technology
- BlueField-2
20:00 NVMe
- BlueField-2 Technology
- VAST technologies associated with the DPU
- VAST servers utilizing smaller form factor hardware
- Power requirements are reduced
25:00 RDMA functions
- GDS
- Efficiencies in design
- VAST driving storage disruption
30:00 Array growth driving technologies
- - NVMe
  - Flash
  - NAND
- Rob’s focus at NVIDIA
  - New products
  - Converged Accelerator
  - Computational storage
- How it works
35:00 History
- IBM Shark (humor)
- Security
- Encryption

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2 years ago

Harold Fritts

I have been in the tech industry since IBM created Selectric. My background, though, is writing. So I decided to get out of the pre-sales biz and return to my roots, doing a bit of writing but still being involved in technology.