Using aGPU for RAID calculations (proprietary GRAID SupremeRAID)

From: Paul Menzel
Date: Tue Nov 30 2021 - 06:58:28 EST



Dear Linux folks,


I read about GRAID SupremeRAID [1], which seems to be an Nvidia T1000 card and software to use the card for RAID calculations.

GRAID SupremeRAID works by installing a virtual NVMe controller onto
the operating system and integrating a PCIe device into the system
equipped with a high-performance AI processor to handle all RAID
operations of the virtual NVMe controller

According to the review *GRAID SupremeRAID SR-1000 Review* [2] it performs quite well. I couldn’t find any driver files online.

Now I am wondering, why a graphics card seems to help so much. What operations are there, modern CPUs cannot keep up with?

If GPUs are that much better, are people already working on a FLOSS solution for the Linux kernel, so people can “just” plug in a graphics card to increase the speed?

Does the Linux kernel already have an API to offload calculations to accelerator cards, so it’s basically plug and play (with AMD graphics cards for example using HSA/KFD)? Entropy sources, like the ChaosKey [3], work like that. If not, would the implementation go under `lib/raid6`?


Kind regards,

Paul


[1]: https://www.graidtech.com/post/graid-reveals-the-next-generation-of-enterprise-data-protection-nvme-ssds
[2]: https://www.storagereview.com/review/graid-supremeraid-sr-1000-review
[3]: https://altusmetrum.org/ChaosKey/