Pure Storage announced that it partnered with Microsoft Azure to design a next-gen chip that will offer a data layer that can keep up with the needs of massive, concurrent high-performance computing (HPC) workloads running in the cloud.
FlashBlade at Equinix with Azure for EDA leverages cloud-adjacent storage for engineering design and automation workloads (EDA).
It is built on Pure Storage’s FlashBlade, which is a unified fast file and object (UFFO) storage platform. FlashBlade offers improved efficiency and resource utilization as well as advanced analytics to eliminate bottlenecks.
“The processing resources in the public cloud empower chip designers to drive innovation, but they still need high-performance storage that can scale rapidly to keep pace. By coupling FlashBlade with Azure, EDA customers are able to use the practically unlimited compute ability of the public cloud for next-generation product development while maintaining full control over data governance and security.” said Amy Fowler, vice president of strategy and solutions of the FlashBlade Business Unit at Pure Storage.
The solution offers simplified cloud adoption through the use of array-level features with which data can be staged and ready for cloud use at any time and in any location geographically. It also can support hundreds of thousands of parallel TCP connections per chassis to enable high levels of parallel computation.
Customers retain full control of their data while leveraging FlashBlade’s Purity operating system with built-in security and data management features.
“Expanding our relationships with Pure Storage and Azure to deliver this cloud adjacent storage solution is a win for customers – enabling them to more easily address the stringent performance, governance, and security requirements of HPC and EDA for semiconductor workloads. Critical to this solution is a connected-cloud architecture that combines physical proximity and ultra-fast, low-latency, private connections between the Pure Storage FlashBlade and Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute infrastructure hosted at Equinix, unlocking a powerful new way for customers to push the high performance compute envelope.” said Zachary Smith, managing director of Equinix Metal.
