- Seagate has debuted a new nvme -hard disk proof of concept
- Prototype system pairs NVME HDDS, SSDS, DPUs and Aistor to AI workloads
- NVME HDDs use less power, with better efficiency and reduced stock costs
At the end of 2021, Seagate revealed a proof-of-concept-hard drive drive that used the NVME protocol and a PCIE interface to technologies that are typically reserved for solid state drive.
Demonstrated at the open calculation project meeting in a custom JBOD enclosure with twelve 3.5-inch drives, NVME HDD contained a proprietary controller that supported SAS, SATA and NVME naturally without the need for a bridge.
Seen as a way of simplifying the data center infrastructure by combining storage devices under a single interface, the driven benefit improvements, lower TCO and significant energy savings.
Combined
Cilo forward to GTC 2025, and Seagate has demonstrated a new proof-of-concept system that combines NVME HDDS and SSDs with NVIDIA’s Bluefield 3 DPU and Aistor software to show how NVME can help address ordinary storage challenges in AI environments.
While other suppliers reportedly explore similar such concepts, Seagate seems to be the only company showing a functional system.
Working with customers and partners
“Unlike SAS/SATA-based hard drives, NVME hard drives remove the need for HBAs, protocol bridges and additional SAS infrastructure, making AI storage more streamlined,” says Seagate.
“These drives allow AI workloads to scale smoothly by integrating high-speed hard-speed hard drive with a high-speed cache in a total NVME architecture.”
The prototype Seagate showed highlighted eight NVME hard drives, four NVME SSDs for cache, nvidia Bluefield DPUs and Aistor’s software, all in a hybridarray.
The team demonstrated that direct GPU-to-storage communication via NVME hard drives and DPUs reduced latency in AI work. Removal of inheritance SAS/SATA -Overhead Simplified System Architecture and Improved Storage Efficiency.
“By using NVME hard drives with SSDs, organizations will be able to optimize costs while maintaining the benefit, reserving SSDs for active data sets and using hard drives for prolonged AI education data storage,” says Seagate.
From a design perspective, the addition of NVME to HDDs potentially requires only a few changes, such as a PCIE interface and firmware updates, while the well-known 3.5-inch form factor.
Compared to SSDs, Seagate says NVME hard drives offers 10 times more effective physical carbon per day. Terabytes, four times more effective operating power consumption per Terabytes and lower costs per Terabytes.
When, or in fact, if these drives want to reach the market is anyone’s guess. Seagate says it “works with customers and partners to investigate how NVME hard drives can fit into the next generation’s AI storage solutions,” but there is no timeline yet.
