3 月 22 日，希捷于 3 月 19 日的英伟达 GTC 2025 大会上与英伟达展示了一个概念验证系统，该系统搭载希捷的 NVMe 机械硬盘和 NVMe 固态硬盘与英伟达 BlueField 3 DPU（数据处理器），实现更高的吞吐量与更低的延迟。希捷称，沿用已久的 SAS / SATA 协议（6-12Gbps）难以应对 AI 工作所需的高吞吐、低延迟需求，全闪存方案价格过于高昂，机械硬盘又无法满足实时数据处理需求，因此希捷带来了 NVMe 机械硬盘解决方案。
根据希捷的描述，该系统搭载 8 块 NVMe 机械硬盘和 4 块 NVMe 固态硬盘缓存，与英伟达 BlueField 3 DPU 直连，相比经过 CPU，可减少 30% 的数据传输延迟。根据希捷的介绍，这些 NVMe 硬盘虽然没有 HBA 或自定义控制器，但仍将保留 SAS / SATA 接口以提高兼容性。虽然机械硬盘永远无法达到固态硬盘的性能水平，但希捷表示改进后的机械硬盘可以在下一代数据中心更有效地利用。通过基于 PCI-E 协议，NVMe 硬盘可以消除传统 SAS / SATA 接口、主机总线适配器（HBA）和不适合 AI 工作负载的控制器架构的瓶颈，有望实现更高的吞吐量和更低的延迟。据 Tom's Hardware 的报道，尽管希捷已具备量产能力，但受制于行业双源供应原则（需至少两家供应商），NVMe 机械硬盘大规模商用需要等待西部数据等竞争对手跟进。
On March 22, Seagate demonstrated a proof-of-concept system at NVIDIA's GTC 2025 conference held on March 19 of this year, featuring Seagate's NVMe hard drives and NVMe solid-state drives paired with NVIDIA's BlueField 3 DPU (data processing unit) to achieve higher throughput and lower latency. Seagate stated that the long-standing SAS/SATA protocols (6-12Gbps) struggle to meet the high throughput and low latency requirements necessary for AI workloads, the all-flash solutions are prohibitively expensive, and mechanical hard drives cannot satisfy real-time data processing needs; thus, Seagate has introduced the NVMe hard drive solution.
According to Seagate's description, the system is equipped with 8 NVMe mechanical hard drives and 4 NVMe solid-state drives for caching, directly connected to the NVIDIA BlueField 3 DPU, which can reduce data transmission latency by 30% compared to going through the CPU. As per Seagate's introduction, although these NVMe hard drives do not have HBA or custom controllers, they will still retain SAS/SATA interfaces to enhance compatibility. While mechanical hard drives can never achieve the performance level of solid-state drives, Seagate stated that the improved mechanical drives can be utilized more effectively in the next generation of data centers. By leveraging the PCI-E protocol, NVMe drives can eliminate the bottlenecks associated with traditional SAS/SATA interfaces, host bus adapters (HBAs), and controller architectures unsuitable for AI workloads, potentially achieving higher throughput and lower latency. According to Tom's Hardware, although Seagate is capable of mass production, large-scale commercial use of NVMe mechanical hard drives needs to wait for competitors like Western Digital to follow due to the industry's dual-source supply principle (which requires at least two vendors).
