UPDATED 14:48 EDT / FEBRUARY 24 2021

INFRA

Intel and Nvidia back $65M funding round for storage chip startup Pliops

Chip startup Pliops Ltd. today said that it has closed a $65 million funding round backed by Intel Corp., Nvidia Corp. and others to support its mission of making data center storage more efficient.

Pliops offers a specialized processor that it says allows applications to access data kept in flash storage up to 100 times faster than with traditional approaches. Moreover, the startup claims, the processor provides the speed increase using a fraction of the electricity required by traditional hardware.

Besides Intel and Nvidia, the startup’s value proposition has also caught the attention of a long list of other investors. Chipmaker Xilinx Inc., storage driver provider Western Digital Corp., Viola Ventures, SOMV, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Expon Capital and Sweetwood Capital also participated in the new $65 million round. Koch Disruptive Technologies led the investment.

The challenge Pliops aims to address is that as the amount of data companies process rises, the amount of computing power required to move that data in and out of flash storage increases as well. Information has to be compressed before it’s written to storage to save capacity, then decompressed when it’s read. There are also many other low-level computations involved in the task.

All those operations not only consume processing power but also generate additional data. According to Pliops, for every byte that is written or read, storage infrastructure must process multiple bytes. The result is a significant amount of hardware overhead that is only poised to grow as enterprises continue adopting data-heavy applications such as machine learning and analytics tools.

Pliops’ processor takes over key storage-related tasks from a company’s servers to speed the workflow. The startup provides the processor as part of an accelerator card that can be plugged into servers via the PCIe port. Moreover, Pliops says that organizations don’t have to rewrite their existing applications to take advantage of the speed boost. 

“With data storage – and the computational requirements for processing that data – growing at an exponential rate, status quo approaches fall short,” said Pliops Chief Executive Uri Beitler. “Our solution takes a new approach that enables unprecedented scalability in data centers. Additionally, to have a partner as important as Nvidia increase their investment in Pliops is a huge vote of confidence.”

Besides PCIe accelerators attached to servers, Pliops will enable customers to deploy its processor as a cloud service. The startup disclosed today it’s “engaged with leaders in the cloud service provider and broader enterprise market segments.” Additionally, Pliops says customers could incorporate its processor into a bigger chip, such as an application-specific integrated circuit, as well as into their own data center products. 

The startup will use the new funding to expand its product line and range of supported use cases. Pliops plans to double its headcount by year’s end to support the effort. 

Image: Pliops

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