Solving the Data Deluge Challenge with Intelligent Silicon
The amount of data created, moved and stored worldwide continues to grow at a blistering pace of 30-50 percent per year. Worldwide, datacenters and networks are straining to keep pace with the unquenchable demand of organizations and consumers for faster access to digital content – anywhere and on any device. Meanwhile, the annual growth of IT budgets remains stalled in the 3-7 percent range.
This data deluge – the disparity between IT spending and unbridled data growth – shows no signs of abating. Mobile network traffic continues to grow at 33 percent per year. Among all portable devices, smartphones alone are expected to top 700 million shipments worldwide in 2012, with bandwidth-hungry video a key driver of network traffic. More than 1.5 million mobile applications generating 85 billion downloads support these feature-rich devices. Fully 80 percent of new smartphone applications will be deployed in the cloud.
End users feel the pain of their own exploding use of data, risking lost information and compromised privacy or security while at times struggling with slow access to digital content, especially video and large-file downloads. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, eBook readers, ultrabooks and other portable devices will help drive a staggering 18-fold rise in mobile traffic alone between 2011 and 2016, a growth rate of 78 percent. Demand for storage capacity is growing at an annual clip of 50 percent, according to industry analyst firm IDC, driven by rapid growth in traditional enterprise applications and databases and cloud applications ranging from social media to virtualization and big data analytics.
“The data deluge gap is going to take a whole symbiotic industry to work together to help solve the challenges related to massive data and traffic growth,” LSI President and CEO Abhi Talwalkar told industry leaders gathered at the IDC Cloud Leadership Forum 2012 in Santa Clara, Calif. “As more services are delivered through the cloud, the need for intelligent silicon that accelerates storage and networking becomes critical.”
“In a way, data is the new currency,” Talwalkar continued. “Every bit has value – whether it’s an enterprise email, pictures of your kids or your favorite song.”
Intelligent silicon that accelerates the movement, storage and sharing of data will take on increasing importance in narrowing the data deluge gap as organizations worldwide work to give users the data they need, when they need it. On Wall Street, where success can be measured in millions of dollars per millisecond, intelligent chips can accelerate transaction processing, analytics and reporting. And in mobile networks, smart silicon will increasingly buttress traffic management and security processing.
“Intelligent silicon is a chance for companies to bring acceleration and intelligence to their data centers and mobile networks,” Talwalkar said. “It’s a chance to close the data deluge gap.”