SanDisk’s Fusion ioMemory Accelerates High Energy Physics Research

To speed up the potential discovery of new particles and forces that will help explain the building blocks of the universe, physicists need supercomputers with the fastest storage solutions. Today, SanDisk announced that the University of Michigan and University of Victoria (CA) are utilizing SanDisk’s Fusion ioMemory solutions. These solutions dramatically reduce the server footprint needed to transmit enormous data sets from the Large Hadron Collider. Working in conjunction with the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, physicists are able to push network technology to its limits by transferring approximately 170 petabytes of datasets to research centers across the world at 100-gigabit/second speeds.

“SanDisk is thrilled to be working with the teams at the University of Michigan and University of Victoria to help fuel their success by providing fast, cost-effective and highly scalable flash solutions to increase data access,” said Sumit Sadana, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, SanDisk. “By utilizing flash technology, the researchers can cost effectively transfer massive amounts of data over long distances, ultimately enabling them to reach new discoveries faster.”

Working with Fusion ioMemory solutions, they were able to eliminate the need for a multi-server configuration, significantly reducing complexity, cost, and points-of-failure. The solution allows researchers to quickly access and analyze their data thereby speeding discoveries.

“The ATLAS and CMS supercomputing projects are very large international projects, each involving approximately 3,000 researchers and most of the world’s countries. These are long term projects—they started 20 years ago and will continue for another 20+ years,” said Randall Sobie, Institute of Particle Physics Research Scientist and Professor at University of Victoria. “My colleagues and I are proud and excited that we have now found a way to accelerate the discoveries made for each of these projects with the help of flash memory solutions from SanDisk. This is a prime example of how SanDisk helps customers meet their goals by enabling fast, reliable access to mission-critical data.”

There is a live demo at SuperComputing 2014, where Professor H. Newman of Caltech, will leverage Fusion ioMemory solutions to transfer data over the wide-area network (WAN) located at the University of Victoria to the WAN in the University of Michigan. Additional information about Fusion ioMemory solutions can be found on the company’s website or enterprise blog. The full SanDisk Press news release can be seen here.