A solid- state drive-based Cache Acceleration Software (CAS) for Linux servers introduced by Intel Corp. today can dramatically speed up the performance of read-intensive applications, according to the microprocessor company.
He said Intel’s CAS address I/O bottlenecks by accelerating applications. For instance, the latest update featuring support for Linux, enables administrators to select applications that will benefit from the higher performance SSDs or allow the CAS to automatically redistribute I/O – intensive data to the flash memory.
There is no need for reconfiguring applications because the CAS automatically identifies “hot, active data,” places a copy on high-speed media and by extension makes the application go faster, said Flint.
The CAS technology was acquired by Intel from the Canadian startup Nevex Virtual Technologies Inc. which it purchased last September. The technology was originally called CacheWorks.
Founded in 2009, Nevex developed hybrid storage software meant to deal with the problem of sluggish applications caused by I/O bottlenecks. The company’s products use an SSD inside an application server to accelerate the placement and flow of data. This allows storage processing performance to catch up to server placement and flow of data while reducing the workload on the storage network and devices.