This week Chris and Martin chat to Steve Fingerhut, CMO at Pliops. Pliops has developed a “Storage Processor” in the form factor of an AIC (add-in card) that offloads storage functions from application software. This discussion looks at why the technology is needed and how Pliops has implemented the solution to drop into an existing server.

The Pliops Storage Processor acts as a high-speed key-value store, implementing in the first instance features such as data compression. As a hardware accelerator, the technology reduces CPU core overhead, saves on storage and can reduce application licensing costs. One interesting factor is the implementation of this hardware compared to other SmartNICs, in that the data path remains within the server itself.

You can find out more at https://pliops.com/

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Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:01:30 – What is the need for SmartNICs? * 00:04:00 – The gap is now flash/CPU not SSD/HDD * 00:07:00 – Pliops accelerates workloads within the server * 00:08:55 – Offload processing is not a new thing * 00:10:30 – Pliops presents as a block device * 00:14:40 – What happens with resiliency/redundancy? * 00:17:00 – How are benefits of Pliops quantified? * 00:21:00 – Offload can save application licensing costs * 00:22:24 – Right-sizing servers is hard * 00:25:40 – Is the product shipping? * 00:28:45 – hardware is more relevant again * 00:31:00 – How will composable affect these solutions? * 00:32:53 – Wrap up

Related Podcasts & Blogs

* VMware Project Monterey – First Impressions* Fixing the x86 Problem* #177 – SmartNICs and Project Monterey

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