SGI is launching an InfiniBand-based RDMA storage device to its freshly announced (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/30/sgi_nexis_nas/) 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.

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 (http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4057.pdf) (heads up, it's a PDF). SGI will be dropping the device onto the market in December. ®

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