Nvidia used its Bluefield Data Processing Unit (DPU) to set a world record for storage IOPS.
The Bluefield kit is Nvidia’s adoption of “SmartNIC”-a network interface card with a good CPU, so it can run workloads such as firewalls or encryption engines, thereby freeing up the CPU to perform more important tasks. Hyperscalers usually use smart network cards, and companies such as Nvidia, Intel, and VMware are working hard to bring them into mainstream data center scenarios.
Nvidia’s benchmark test shows that a pair of HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen 10 Plus servers are each connected to a dual 100GB Ethernet Bluefield, in a configuration that provides 400Gb/s wired bandwidth between the initiator and the target.The company used Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK) and International Olympic Committee Tested, and also for the Linux kernel.
These tests provided 41.5 million IOPS. In some Nvidia tests, data moved faster than local storage using Intel Optane storage-class memory.
It can be said that it shouldn’t happen that network storage is faster than local storage!
NVIDIA postal Regarding the test, it is claimed that the result easily broke the “previous world record of 10 million IOPS set with proprietary storage products”.
This is good news for storage administrators.
But Kevin Deierling, senior vice president of Nvidia Networks, admitted that the test did not simulate real-world workloads. Although SPDK and FIO run on Bluefields CPUs, they did not directly show how DPU/SmartNIC can help CPU performance.
Instead, he explained that tests showed that Bluefields can saturate a 400Gb/s network, which is good to know, because when AI applications need data, they should do it sooner rather than later.
Deierling said that a demonstration showing how DPU/SmartNIC can benefit more mainstream workloads will be launched in 2022, especially in the middle of the year. He expects VMware’s Monterrey project (VMware’s hypervisor to run on SmartNIC/DPU) Part) will be generally available.
The vice president said that Nvidia has seen strong interest from security and network vendors, and they hope to run their products on Bluefield DPUs and name Palo Alto, Juniper, Checkpoint and F5 to play a role.
VMware’s Project Monterey is the most prominent attempt to adapt DPU/SmartNIC to mainstream data centers. VMware promises to offload workloads to devices as a core part of its Cloud Foundation suite, which it offers as the easiest way to build a hybrid cloud. ®
