EBOF Technology Gets Massive Push with New KIOXIA – Marvell Partnership

KIOXIA Also Announced Collaboration with Foxconn-Ingrasys and Accton; High-Performance NVMe SSDs with an Ethernet Interface from KIOXIA Enable Cost Reduced, Simplified All-Flash Arrays

Last year in October, Toshiba Memory Corporation was officially rebranded to a new company – “KIOXIA”. This week, KIOXIA America Inc. made a very important announcement related to Ethernet SSD storage technology. KIOXIA is now collaborating with select partners and customers to bolster innovations and adoption of NVMe-over Fabric (NVM-oF) in important markets. Hereon, customers would be able to validate the benefits of Ethernet attached storage to their existing Ethernet (RoCEv2) networks. Since the last few months, KIOXIA has been working in sync with leading networking and communications solutions companies like Marvell, Foxconn-Ingrasys, and Accton to bring EBOF technology solutions to market. EBOF stands for Ethernet Bunch of Flash.

In 2020, Cloud infrastructure providers are the top most consumers of SSD / Ethernet technology provided by Toshiba and others. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM are transforming the way Cloud storage infrastructure have evolved in the last 18 months or so — with frequent updates and upgrades to their “Hot” and “Cold” tiers of Cloud data storage.

Last month, Marvell had announced an expansion of its revolutionary NVMe over Fabrics™ (NVMe-oF™) portfolio.

At the time of this announcement, Thad Omura, vice president of marketing of the Flash Business Unit at Marvell said –

“We are thrilled to collaborate with KIOXIA to enable the industry’s first native Ethernet NVMe-oF SSD with Marvell’s 88SN2400 controller.”

Thad added, “The native Ethernet SSD combined with our switches and controllers offer data centers an EBOF solution that lowers their total cost of ownership, increases performance and reduces power as compared to alternative JBOF solutions.”

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EBOF is Key to NVMe-oF Ethernet SSD Technology 

As we head into the last few months of the year 2020, analysts are still expecting the Data Storage and Management market to grow at an explosive rate compared to previous years. All this despite the ongoing COVID-19 slowdown and lack of technology collaborations in the storage industry marring the growth rate in the current year.

New technologies like EBOF help data storage companies to optimize scalability, flexibility, and overall data center manageability. In order to continue growing with data, storage capacity, and bandwidth, companies have realized the importance of cutting down on processing time. EBOF offers a sustainable solution through an Ethernet fabric that can scale flash and optimally disaggregate storage from compute.

The EBOF storage solution bypasses the cost, complexity, and system limitations inherent with standard JBOF storage systems, which typically include a CPU, DRAM, HBA, and switch. This accelerates applications and workloads where disaggregated low-latency, high bandwidth, highly available storage is needed – bringing greatly improved performance and lower total cost of ownership to Edge, Enterprise, and Cloud data centers.

KIOXIA Ethernet SSD Features:

• Support for single or dual 25Gb Ethernet and RoCEv2 RDMA connection
• NVMe-oF 1.1 and NVMe 1.4 compliance
• 5-inch1 15-millimeter (mm) Z-height form factor
• Capacities supported: 1920/3840/7680 GB
• Two-die failure recovery and other reliability features
• Support for Redfish® and NVMe-MI™ storage management specifications
• Support for IPv4 and IPv6 architecture

Executive Insights

EBOF Opens Up a New World of Possibilities for Cloud Data Center Operators

“The Ethernet-attached storage ecosystem is an idea whose time has come,” noted Alvaro Toledo, vice president of SSD marketing and product planning at KIOXIA America, Inc. “By collaborating with Marvell, Foxconn-Ingrasys and Accton to bring an EBOF system to market, we are enabling the true potential of NVMe over Fabrics. This opens up a new world of possibilities for cloud data center operators, software-defined storage providers, and server and storage system OEMs.”

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EBOF Eliminates Costly CPU, DRAM, and AIC components

“EBOF has great potential to be highly advantageous by enabling optimal storage disaggregation, eliminating costly CPU, DRAM, and AIC components,” said Benjamin Ting, senior vice president for Ingrasys.

Benjamin added, “By eliminating the bottleneck formed in traditional CPU-based storage architectures to unleash the performance of SSDs, EBOF holds the key to the future of data center and HPC storage.”

Data Center Bandwidth Demands Greater Storage Capacity and Bandwidth With Lower Latency

“Accton is pleased to collaborate with KIOXIA to deliver this innovative EBOF solution,” noted Melody Chiang, senior vice president of product development and management for Accton Technology. “Explosive data center bandwidth demands are driving the requirement for increased storage capacity and bandwidth with lower latency. This disaggregated EBOF solution will address performance challenges, decrease complexity, and lower TCO. We look forward to the widespread industry adoption of this Ethernet-based storage technology.”

From the invention of flash memory to today’s breakthrough BiCS FLASH™ 3D technology, KIOXIA continues to pioneer cutting-edge memory solutions and services that enrich people’s lives and expand society’s horizons. The company’s innovative 3D flash memory technology, BiCS FLASH, is shaping the future of storage in high-density applications, including advanced smartphones, PCs, SSDs, automotive, and data centers.

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Leading Players in the SSD Manufacturing Market

• Samsung
• IBM
• Dell EMC
• NetApp
• HPE
• Lenovo
• Western Digital / Sandisk
• Kingston
• Crucial
• Intel
• Seagate
• Pure Storage
• Toshiba
• Corsair
• Micron
• PNY
• OCZ

Below, we share how these players stack up against each other in the market.