SGI is launching an InfiniBand-based RDMA storage device to its freshly announced Nexis family of NAS storage systems.

The Nexis 9000 is a 5U system built with high-performance computing in mind. It holds 48 drives in four enclosures, for a maximum of 144TB of raw capacity. The hardware is powered by up to eight Intel Dual Cores and has a max system memory of 128GB.

Nexis 9000

By combining remote direct-memory access and the Infiniband protocol, SGI aims to reduce CPU overhead and increase throughput from disk to application. That's likely to appeal to those seeking to consolidate multiple departments onto a single NAS platform and increase bandwidth.

"With RDMA over InfiniBand, we're pushing scalability to up to 1GB per second write and 3GB per second read performance with significant improvement planned in the future," said Raj Das, veep of SGI storage.

SGI is pitching the hardware as a performance alternative to costly Fibre Channel — offering InfiniBand, 10Gigabit Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet protocols on the device.

The company sees the 9000 as its pinnacle platform for consolidation of shared data assets in business and scientific fields, but principally for digital media servers.

Nexis 9000 specs are available here (heads up, it's a PDF). SGI will be dropping the device onto the market in December. ®

Related stories

• Small bird wants SGI to fly in private (28 March 2008)
• SGI slots 'Seaburg' chipset into blades (21 March 2008)
• SGI tears up couch to buy Linux Networx assets (15 February 2008)
• Year in review VMware clobbers the world, while big, solid disks rise (10 December 2007)
• SC07 Diversity attacks Top500 supercomputer list (12 November 2007)
• SGI fires up fancy NAS for dummies (30 September 2007)
• SGI's ICE, ICE bladey (27 June 2007)
• SGI hires serial CEO (9 April 2007)
• SGI gives Microsoft the squeeze (11 January 2007)
• SGI dishes out super simple storage box (12 December 2006)