IBM FlashSystem with IBM Variable Stripe RAID delivers two dimensions of data protection.

Most enterprise all-flash storage arrays available in the marketplace today are designed using proprietary software integrated with essentially commodity hardware. This architecture is intended to reduce both the cost of the product and its time to market. A prime example of this approach is the use of commodity SSDs as the flash storage medium.

To provide enterprise-grade data protection, these products implement various RAID regimes across the SSDs to reduce the chance of data loss from a flash failure.A key liability of this system-level RAID approach to data protection is that when a single flash media failure is detected in an individual SSD, the entire SSD must be taken offline and replaced before robust data protection is re-established.

This leads to higher maintenance costs, lower system availability and times of greater vulnerability for business-critical applications.The IBM FlashSystem family of industry-leading all-flash storage arrays takes a different approach. Instead of commodity hardware and SSDs, IBM FlashSystem leverages the purpose-engineered advantages of IBM FlashCore™ technology to provide two independent dimensions of data protection. System-level RAID is implemented across all the IBM MicroLatency modules in every IBM FlashSystem array.

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Highlights

• Add a new dimension of data protection with IBM Variable Stripe RAID™
• Automatically address flash failures with no loss of data or storage capacity
• Eliminate the data protection, perfor-mance and resource utilization inefficiencies caused by commodity solid-state drives (SSDs)
• Increase the granularity of flash monitoring, management and provision-ing down to the individual flash block level and below
• Maximise utilisation of flash storage resources

Data: the foundation of cognitive business

The world is awash in oceans of data. Structured or unstructured, generated internally or created by others, stored in the data centre or the cloud, data is the cornerstone of cognitive business. Leveraging vast quantities of data to uncover patterns and pursue breakthrough ideas, a cognitive business can elevate expertise, speed time to market, improve processes and enhance decision-making.

Infusing cognitive into your business requires you to collect and curate the right data. IBM storage solutions enable the data infrastructure needed to efficiently capture, deliver, manage and protect data with superior performance and economics.

Optimising data storage with IBM allows your business to access the right data at the right time, providing the data foundation to propel your organisation into the cognitive era with confidence.  Watch the video:

https://youtu.be/6YekFnMnp3wThrough joint engineering and deeper product collaboration, IBM and Red Hat plan to deliver solutions built on key components of Red Hat’s portfolio of open source products, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux High Availability offerings. This move will help position IBM Power Systems as a featured component of Red Hat’s hybrid cloud strategy spanning platform infrastructure located both on and off premises

IBM and Red Hat have a long tradition of innovation to advance product offerings across IBM platforms. Through expanded collaboration both in upstream technologies and product development, the companies aim to enable greater compatibility between their respective platforms, bringing Red Hat’s offerings to clients who previously worked in distributed environments. Specifically, IBM and Red Hat are working together to build functionality and jointly engineer solutions across IBM Power Systems and productized in the Red Hat portfolio by:

• Enabling Red Hat solutions on IBM’s next-generation Power Systems;
• Introducing new high performance computing (HPC) capabilities for leading edge research deployments;
• Developing high availability capabilities for Power Systems.

“Red Hat believes that the next generation of applications and hybrid cloud services will be powered by modern, hyperscale hardware and software that span both public clouds, like IBM Cloud, and on-premise platforms,” said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platforms Business Unit, Red Hat. “Red Hat and IBM are expanding their long-standing alliance to address this opportunity. Through joint engineering and deeper product collaboration, we are excited to deliver world-class solutions built on Red Hat’s portfolio of enterprise open source solutions and IBM’s Power Systems platform.”

“Clients choose open source capabilities to achieve new levels of agility and flexibility in their hybrid cloud environments, but they need access to optimal support,” said Scott Crowder, CTO, IBM Systems. “Clients have long turned to Red Hat and IBM to support their enterprise computing needs. Now, we are expanding that relationship with Red Hat to provide new systems designed for enterprise-grade open source solutions that go far beyond what commodity infrastructure has offered.”

To learn more about the IBM Systems portfolio, visit the blog.

To learn more about Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud portfolio, visit http://www.redhat.com

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Las Vegas, NV (IBM EDGE) – 19 Sep 2016

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – 03 Aug 2016: IBM (NYSE: IBM) scientists have created randomly spiking neurons using phase-change materials to store and process data. This demonstration marks a significant step forward in the development of energy-efficient, ultra-dense integrated neuromorphic technologies for applications in cognitive computing.

Inspired by the way the biological brain functions, scientists have theorised for decades that it should be possible to imitate the versatile computational capabilities of large populations of neurons. However, doing so at densities and with a power budget that would be comparable to those seen in biology has been a significant challenge, until now.

“We have been researching phase-change materials for memory applications for over a decade, and our progress in the past 24 months has been remarkable,” said IBM Fellow Evangelos Eleftheriou. “In this period, we have discovered and published new memory techniques, including projected memory, stored 3 bits per cell in phase-change memory for the first time, and now are demonstrating the powerful capabilities of phase-change-based artificial neurons, which can perform various computational primitives such as data-correlation detection and unsupervised learning at high speeds using very little energy.”
The artificial neurons designed by IBM scientists in Zurich consist of phase-change materials, including germanium antimony telluride, which exhibit two stable states, an amorphous one (without a clearly defined structure) and a crystalline one (with structure). These materials are the basis of re-writable Blu-ray discs. However, the artificial neurons do not store digital information; they are analog, just like the synapses and neurons in our biological brain.
In the published demonstration, the team applied a series of electrical pulses to the artificial neurons, which resulted in the progressive crystallization of the phase-change material, ultimately causing the neuron to fire. In neuroscience, this function is known as the integrate-and-fire property of biological neurons. This is the foundation for event-based computation and, in principle, is similar to how our brain triggers a response when we touch something hot.

Exploiting this integrate-and-fire property, even a single neuron can be used to detect patterns and discover correlations in real-time streams of event-based data. For example, in the Internet of Things, sensors can collect and analyze volumes of weather data collected at the edge for faster forecasts. The artificial neurons could be used to detect patterns in financial transactions to find discrepancies or use data from social media to discover new cultural trends in real time. Large populations of these high-speed, low-energy nano-scale neurons could also be used in neuromorphic coprocessors with co-located memory and processing units.

IBM scientists have organised hundreds of artificial neurons into populations and used them to represent fast and complex signals. Moreover, the artificial neurons have been shown to sustain billions of switching cycles, which would correspond to multiple years of operation at an update frequency of 100 Hz. The energy required for each neuron update was less than five picojoule and the average power less than 120 microwatts — for comparison, 60 million microwatts power a 60 watt lightbulb.
“Populations of stochastic phase-change neurons, combined with other nanoscale computational elements such as artificial synapses, could be a key enabler for the creation of a new generation of extremely dense neuromorphic computing systems,” said Tomas Tuma, a co-author of the paper.

So far this year, technology companies in the United States have shed about 63,000 jobs, according to outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.