Pure Storage introduces FlashBlade//EXA

Pure Storage has debuted FlashBlade//EXA, the industry’s highest performing data storage platform engineered for the most demanding requirements of AI and High-Performance Computing (HPC). While legacy approaches to data storage have held back AI potential, FlashBlade//EXA breaks the metadata bottleneck with a proven architecture based on FlashBlade, built for high concurrency and the massive amounts of metadata operations typical of large scale AI and HPC workloads. In preliminary testing, FlashBlade//EXA is projected to deliver more than 10 terabytes per second read performance in a single namespace – setting a new bar as the industry’s highest-performing storage solution.

The FlashBlade//EXA architecture scales data and metadata independently; provides near unlimited scale with off the shelf, third-party data nodes that enable highly scalable multi-dimensional performance; and reduces complexity in deployment, management, and scaling through the use of standard protocols and networking. 

Driving a paradigm shift in storage

More powerful GPUs have increased the pace and scale that foundational AI models can be trained. The explosive growth in model size and sophistication is driving a paradigm shift in storage requirements, where solutions must seamlessly keep up with the computational intensity and volume, and variety in data demands of AI and HPC.

Legacy storage systems were not designed to meet modern AI requirements. When applied to large-scale AI and HPC, they face critical limitations with parallel and concurrent reads and writes, metadata performance, ultra-low latency, asynchronous checkpointing, and predictable, high throughput. 

A modern storage solution must provide a massively parallel, disaggregated architecture to deliver flexibility at scale – ensuring that storage helps accelerate the pace of AI. 

A modern storage architecture for AI and HPC workloads

Legacy high-performance storage architectures were optimised for traditional HPC environments, with more predictable and regular workloads and a focus on raw performance scaling. Today’s AI workloads are complex and multi-modal — including text, images, videos — being processed simultaneously by tens of thousands of GPUs. This dramatic shift demands advanced metadata optimisation alongside massive performance scaling to efficiently manage diverse data types and high concurrency. 

FlashBlade//EXA is purpose-built for the challenges of AI workloads with unmatched performance and metadata management. Its disaggregated, massively parallel architecture enables storage flexibility at scale. Enterprises can adapt to evolving multimodal models, optimise reliability, and eliminate idle time to accelerate AI model training and inference while improving GPU utilisation. Additionally, the combination of Pure Storage’s metadata engine and Purity operating system with cost-efficient, off-the-shelf data nodes enables enterprises to achieve an unparalleled price-to-performance ratio. 

FlashBlade//EXA is built on a decade of Pure Storage innovation to provide transformational storage for AI and HPC environments. FlashBlade//EXA will:

• Deliver industry-leading performance at scale, leveraging Pure Storage’s proven metadata capabilities to maximise AI pipeline efficiency and minimise delays during training and inference workflows.
  • Enabling multidimensional performance with massively parallel processing and scalable metadata IOPS to support high-speed AI requirements. Providing 10+ terabytes per second in a single namespace, delivering the industry’s best performance. 

• Reduce management complexity by eliminating metadata bottlenecks
  • Providing high metadata performance, availability and resiliency to handle massive AI datasets without manual tuning or additional configuration. 

• Accelerate AI innovation with a highly configurable and disaggregated architecture
  • Powering the evolving AI and HPC landscape with industry standard protocols; 
  • Incorporating high-speed NVIDIA ConnectX NICs, Spectrum switches, LinkX cables, and accelerated communications libraries.  

FlashBlade//EXA is expected to become available in summer 2025.

“FlashBlade//EXA delivers a massively parallel architecture that enables independent scaling of data and metadata to provide customers with unmatched performance, scalability, and adaptability for some of the largest, most demanding data environments in the world. Storage is now accelerating the pace of large-scale HPC and AI evolution,” said Rob Lee, Chief Technology Officer, Pure Storage.

“Data is the fuel for enterprise AI factories, directly impacting performance and reliability of AI applications. With NVIDIA networking, the FlashBlade//EXA platform enables organisations to leverage the full potential of AI technologies while maintaining data security, scalability, and performance for model training, fine tuning, and the latest agentic AI and reasoning inference requirements,” said Rob Davis, Vice President, Storage Networking Technology, NVIDIA.

“AI has disrupted the storage market. Legacy storage environments are unable to handle the massive parallelism required of AI and HPC. Modern storage and data platforms must continuously feed the GPUs and accelerators training the large foundation models, and support the most demanding workloads. However, with high performance storage comes complexity. With FlashBlade//EXA, Pure Storage is leveraging its decade of experience unlocking the potential of metadata performance, while abstracting the complexity associated with managing these environments. If FlashBlade//EXA delivers on its promise, it will return real value to organisations of all sizes,” said Matt Kimball, VP & Principal Analyst, Moor Insights & Strategy.