{"id":23312,"date":"2019-09-23T08:30:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-23T15:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insidebigdata.com\/?p=23312"},"modified":"2019-10-07T11:51:23","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T18:51:23","slug":"daos-delivers-exascale-performance-using-hpc-storage-so-fast-it-requires-new-units-of-measurement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insidebigdata.com\/2019\/09\/23\/daos-delivers-exascale-performance-using-hpc-storage-so-fast-it-requires-new-units-of-measurement\/","title":{"rendered":"DAOS Delivers Exascale Performance Using HPC Storage So Fast It Requires New Units of Measurement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Forget what you previously knew about high-performance storage and file systems. New I\/O models for HPC such as Distributed Asynchronous Object Storage (DAOS<\/a>) have been architected from the ground up to make use of new NVM technologies such as Intel\u00ae Optane\u2122 DC Persistent Memory Modules (Intel Optane DCPMMs). With latencies measured in nanoseconds and bandwidth measured in tens of GB\/s, new storage devices such as Intel DCPMMs redefine the measures used to describe high-performance nonvolatile storage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAOS is an extremely lightweight I\/O infrastructure that operates end-to-end in user space with full operating system bypass to deliver the performance capability of sub-microsecond storage devices. DAOS offers a shift away from the traditional HPC block-based, high-latency POSIX<\/a> storage model to one that inherently supports fine-grained data access and unlocks the performance of next generation storage systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility will be the first major production deployment of the DAOS storage system as part of Aurora, the first US exascale system coming in 2021. The DAOS storage system is designed to provide the levels of metadata operation rates and bandwidth required for I\/O extensive workloads on an exascale-level machine. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designed to bypass the traditional POSIX IO bottlenecks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to DAOS performance when used in combination with\nthe Intel Optane DCPMM module is that the CPU can communicate in user space directly\nwith storage via special Direct Access (DAX) instructions available\non second generation Intel\u00ae Xeon\u00ae Scalable Family processors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difference is significant as illustrated in Figure 2, because direct user space access eliminates many of the frustrating performance limiting aspects of traditional POSIX I\/O that increase latency and reduce storage bandwidth such as the operating system, page cache, block driver, and PCIe bus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility will be the first major production deployment of the DAOS storage system as part of Aurora, the first US exascale system coming in 2021. The DAOS storage system is designed to provide the levels of metadata operation rates and bandwidth required for I\/O extensive workloads on an exascale-level machine. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Designed to bypass the traditional POSIX IO bottlenecks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to DAOS performance when used in combination with the Intel Optane DCPMM module is that the CPU can communicate in user space directly with storage via special Direct Access (DAX) instructions available on second generation Intel\u00ae Xeon\u00ae Scalable Family processors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difference is significant as illustrated in Figure 2, because direct user space access eliminates many of the frustrating performance limiting aspects of traditional POSIX I\/O that increase latency and reduce storage bandwidth such as the operating system, page cache, block driver, and PCIe bus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the DAOS API and data model are driving a new scalable storage model for structured and unstructured data sets that supports a rich set of data models that can capitalize on the performance of Intel Optane non-volatile memory. DAOS supports both non-blocking data and metadata operations are supported plus a burgeoning software ecosystem already includes a number of rich data models. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2: DAOS is a non-POSIX rich storage API that provides a new foundation for HPC I\/O<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

DAOS is open-source, available now<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAOS is available now. Simply download from the DAOS github<\/a> repository and install to evaluate the benefits in your environment. Numerous paths can be followed to test and integrate DAOS into your HPC application environment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n