Purpose-built to bring unmatched performance, scalability and power of FlashBlade technology to next-generation, GPU-intensive AI and HPC workloads
Pure Storage, a pioneer in advanced data storage technology and services, has unveiled FlashBlade//EXA™, the industry’s highest-performing data storage platform designed to meet the rigorous demands of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and High-Performance Computing (HPC). Traditional data storage systems have struggled to keep pace with AI advancements, but FlashBlade//EXA overcomes these limitations by eliminating metadata bottlenecks. Built on the proven FlashBlade architecture, it is optimized for high concurrency and the intensive metadata operations required by large-scale AI and HPC workloads.
In early testing, FlashBlade//EXA has demonstrated read speeds exceeding 10 terabytes per second within a single namespace—establishing a new industry benchmark for high-performance storage.
Next-Generation Architecture for AI and HPC
FlashBlade//EXA is engineered to scale data and metadata independently, offering virtually unlimited expansion through the integration of off-the-shelf, third-party data nodes. This multi-dimensional performance capability simplifies deployment, management, and scaling by leveraging standard protocols and networking.
Addressing the Growing Storage Needs of AI
As AI models become more complex and require significantly larger datasets, storage systems must evolve to support the increasing computational intensity and diverse data formats inherent in modern AI and HPC applications. Traditional storage architectures, designed for predictable workloads, struggle to handle parallel and concurrent read/write operations, metadata performance, ultra-low latency, asynchronous checkpointing, and high-throughput demands.
To fully harness AI’s potential, storage must adopt a massively parallel, disaggregated architecture, ensuring optimal scalability and flexibility.
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Purpose-Built for AI and HPC Workloads
Unlike legacy storage solutions optimized for conventional HPC environments, modern AI workloads require advanced metadata management and massive performance scaling. AI processes vast amounts of diverse data types—including text, images, and video—processed concurrently by thousands of GPUs. This shift demands a new level of metadata optimization to ensure efficiency and high concurrency.
FlashBlade//EXA is purpose-built to meet these challenges, offering unparalleled performance and metadata capabilities. Its disaggregated, massively parallel architecture enhances storage flexibility, enabling enterprises to accelerate AI model training and inference while optimizing GPU utilization. The integration of Pure Storage’s metadata engine and Purity operating system with cost-effective, third-party data nodes delivers an exceptional price-to-performance ratio.
Key Benefits of FlashBlade//EXA:
- Unmatched Performance at Scale: Pure Storage’s metadata engine ensures seamless AI pipeline efficiency, eliminating delays in training and inference.
- Massively Parallel Processing: Supports high-speed AI workloads with scalable metadata IOPS, delivering 10+ terabytes per second in a single namespace.
- Simplified Management: Eliminates metadata bottlenecks, enhancing performance, availability, and resiliency for large-scale AI datasets.
- Accelerated AI Innovation: Designed for multi-dimensional performance using standard protocols and industry-leading networking solutions, including NVIDIA ConnectX NICs, Spectrum switches, and LinkX cables.
Executive Insights
“FlashBlade//EXA delivers a massively parallel architecture that enables independent scaling of data and metadata to provide customers with unmatched performance, scalability, and adaptability for some of the largest, most demanding data environments in the world. Storage is now accelerating the pace of large-scale HPC and AI evolution.” – Rob Lee, Chief Technology Officer, Pure Storage.
“Data is the fuel for enterprise AI factories, directly impacting performance and reliability of AI applications. With NVIDIA networking, the FlashBlade//EXA platform enables organizations to leverage the full potential of AI technologies while maintaining data security, scalability, and performance for model training, fine-tuning, and the latest agentic AI and reasoning inference requirements.” – Rob Davis, Vice President, Storage Networking Technology, NVIDIA.
“At Penguin Solutions, we are experts at helping our customers deploy AI infrastructure at scale. We know the complexity involved, and that legacy storage systems can undermine high-performing AI infrastructure. FlashBlade//EXA is purpose-built for the demands of modern AI and HPC workloads. It provides the bandwidth, manageability at scale, and configurable, disaggregated architecture needed to power today’s large data centers. We see it as an ideal solution for intensive AI environments and HPC applications.” – Pete Manca, President, Penguin Solutions.
“AI has disrupted the storage market. Legacy storage environments are unable to handle the massive parallelism required of AI and HPC. Modern storage and data platforms must continuously feed the GPUs and accelerators training the large foundation models, and support the most demanding workloads. However, with high-performance storage comes complexity. With FlashBlade//EXA, Pure Storage is leveraging its decade of experience unlocking the potential of metadata performance, while abstracting the complexity associated with managing these environments. If FlashBlade//EXA delivers on its promise, it will return real value to organizations of all sizes.” – Matt Kimball, VP & Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy.
