MaxLinear has launched a third-generation OCP-compliant Panther III storage accelerator promising 12:1 data reduction.
The company was founded in 2003, IPO’d in 2010, and supplies digital, high-performance analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits and software network connectivity products. Its Panther products offload storage IO from a host CPU and provides lower latency, higher throughput compression and security acceleration. They have multiple independent parallel transform engines, each of which provides simultaneous compression, encryption, and hashing for FC, NVMe and other connected storage devices: SSD, HDD and tape. The PCIe gen 3-connected Panther II arrived in 2014 with 40Gbps throughput, which rose to 640Gbps when devices were cascaded. Panther III started sampling in August 2022.
James Lougheed, VP & GM of High Performance Analog & Accelerators at MaxLinear, said: “Data storage capacity continues to double every three years and with the deployment of higher throughput NVMe drives and optical cabling, the need for hardware offload accelerators for data reduction continues to rise.”
Panther III provides 200Gbps throughput, five times faster than Panther II, and scalable to 3.2Tbps in cascaded configs.
MaxLinear says its new card is designed for storage workloads such as database acceleration, storage offload, encryption, compression, and deduplication enablement for maximum data reduction. The company says the Internet of Things, HPC, AI/ML and analytics workloads are all increasing storage IO needs.
The product features:
- Maximized data reduction: Panther III’s 12:1 data reduction allowing storage systems to store 1/12th the data, and users to access, process, and transfer data 12 times faster even in an HDD system.
- Independent hash block size and programmable offset to enhance deduplication hit rates.
- Encryption capabilities eliminate the need for Self-Encrypting Drives (SED) and remove the cost of and need for security routers.
- Software development kit (SDK) contains API, drivers, and source code for incorporation with end application software and software-defined storage (SDS).
- So called six-nines reliability: Built-in end-to-end data protection, Real Time Verification (RTV) of all transforms, NVMe protection, and in-line CRCs/parity assures data integrity and eliminates data loss.
We think that this 12:1 data reduction is an “up to” number and dependent on the data set involved.
The OCP version of the Panther III card is available immediately with a PCIe gen 4 version available in Q3 2023. MaxLinear says there are no CPU or software limitations; plug it in and storage IO will go faster.
