rENIAC Launches Data Engine Software on Amazon EC2 F1 instances to Provide “More than Moore” Processing Power for Open Source NoSQL Databases
rENIAC’s data acceleration software elevates performance of Apache Cassandra in the cloud within minutes of deployment
SAN JOSE — Xilinx ADAPT – March 24, 2021 – Today, rENIAC announced the general availability of rENIAC Data Engine on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) F1 instances in AWS Marketplace, a software solution that provides an ultrafast data pipeline enabling elastic performance for cloud-hosted databases like Apache Cassandra. rENIAC Data Engine users can expect to see up to a 10x increase in throughput and up to a 20x reduction in latency within minutes of deployment.
The need for cloud-based high-performance computing has reached new heights in the last five years as the gap between real-time data growth and processing power has grown. As the gap widened with the slowing of Moore’s Law, the idea formed that combining data center components like CPUs and SSDs with FPGAs into a standard cloud instance could create a supercharged data pipeline for applications and provide “more than Moore” processing power.
rENIAC Data Engine was the solution born of this idea, founded by two experts in FPGA architecture and engineering, Prasanna Sundararajan and Chidamber Kulkarni. FPGAs are already deployed in production environments as performance-boosting hardware for cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), and customers in industries like telecommunications, manufacturing and finance have leveraged this hardware for years.
Now, with today’s announcement of the availability of rENIAC Data Engine on Amazon EC2 F1 instances, the powerful combination of public cloud and FPGAs is available to any organization that needs better performance out of open source databases like Apache Cassandra.
The F1 instance combines all the benefits of a major infrastructure provider without the cost or maintenance of physical hosting, which gives users the flexibility of cloud with the power of a datacenter. The F1 instance is particularly innovative, however, as it leverages FPGAs or Field Programmable Gate Arrays in order to provide deterministic throughput and consistent low latency when used for data-intensive applications.
“We have seen firsthand the need for a true drop-in solution that allows databases to keep pace with the flow of end user data,” said Sundararajan. “Market leaders in industries like retail, eCommerce and finance no longer want to continue to add database nodes or CPUs in order to try and keep up with their application’s compute needs. Innovators are looking for the next jump in processing innovation to operationalize large data sets in real-time, and we are very excited to bring that solution to market together with Xilinx and AWS.”
By creating a data pipeline that connects commercially available CPUs and SSD components with FPGAs and open source databases, rENIAC Data Engine provides huge performance boosts that can be realized within minutes of deployment without the need for any specialized engineering knowledge.
Not only is rENIAC the only true drop-in data accelerator available for Apache Cassandra to increase throughput and reduce latency, it is also the only solution that can be used for “on demand performance” boosts by expanding the row cache feature native to Cassandra. “Many teams will find themselves adding Cassandra nodes or moving them to high I/O compute instances to try and keep up with applications that demand single-millisecond latency,” said Prasad Bagewadi, Cassandra expert and author of Cassandra Admin DBA Guide. “Unfortunately, using ephemeral storage on the high throughput instances or changing the instance types of existing nodes comes at the cost of higher maintenance and downtime. rENIAC is bringing a much needed solution for low, predictable latency and potential cost reduction to the Cassandra community.”
This data acceleration solution from rENIAC, Xilinx and AWS is the “holy grail” as one customer puts it, to scale data infrastructure up or down with zero downtime, allowing engineering teams to deliver “always on” performance requirements. This is critical for application developers and data teams across industries as customer demand for 24/7 services and transactions only continues to grow. “rENIAC provides a critical competitive advantage for any organization that wants to transact with strict SLA windows or that simply wants to avoid downtime during a peak event,” said Dave Carr, longtime IT services leader and cybersecurity executive. “You can’t put a ‘back in an hour’ sign up in your window anymore; customers want to be able to transact on their schedule, and rENIAC makes that possible.”
In line with this thinking, AWS sees the democratization of high-performance computing as key to their customer’s growth and a benefit that should not be restricted to the most powerful technical organizations in the world. “We are pleased to support rENIAC as an AWS Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN) that is making the Amazon EC2 F1 instance even more accessible to customers,” said Michal Skiba, Senior Product Manager, Amazon EC2, AWS. “Amazon EC2 F1 instances are already in use by customers across industries like genomics, networking and security, and finance and analytics, and now rENIAC Data Engine makes it even easier for customers of all sizes to realize maximum database performance.”
To try rENIAC Data Engine on Amazon EC2 F1 instances, visit the AWS Marketplace listing, and to learn more, register for the how-to-get-started webinar on April 13.
Visit www.reniac.com or contact us at hello@reniac.com for support, pricing or press inquiries.