News

Hardware-accelerated de-duplication

posted on 10 March 2008 14:50

Hifn's CPU-offload cards

Hifn has unveiled a hardware-accelerated data de-duplication card to speed up de-duplication on CPU-bound servers.

The Express DR 250 and 255 cards are specifically designed to accelerate data de-duplication and data reduction applications and are the industry’s first hardware accelerated, data de-duplication cards. They feature built-in SHA-1 or MD5 hashing algorithms and single-pass LZS 2.5:1 data compression (on average) with an optional encryption engine.

The cards have a throughput of 250MB/s.

The DR 250/255 family is offered in a full height PCI-X 64 bit slot (DR 250) or a low-profile, four-lane PCI-e form factor (DR 255). The cards also support a complement of hardware-advantaged, data security and authentication function combined with AES 256 bit encryption (Advanced Encryption Standard) and have a hardware ANSI X9.17 random number generator.

Hifn states that data de-duplication can deliver data reduction that is more than an order of magnitude greater than traditional byte-oriented, lossless data compression techniques alone. This can be achieved even with image and sound files that are not compressible using typical methods.

Greg Collins, CEO of Optica Technologies, a Louisville, Colo.-based developer of connectivity and security solutions, said: “Hifn's Express DR 250/255 uses state-of-the-art security and data compression technology to enable the next generation of data reduction and de-duplication applications. The combination of these technologies with the PCI Express interface ensures market-leading features and high performance.”

Which customers will need the cards? John Matze, Hifn's business development VP, said: “The expansion of our Express DR family with the DR 250/255 cards should greatly appeal to two customer groups: de-duplication ISVs looking to maximize their performance over software only algorithms and end-users who will be looking for appliances that include the acceleration card for performance gains and support of corporate green initiatives.”

The Express DR250/255 cards are available now, at a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $1,195.00.