Case Study: Innovium achieves faster time-to-market and blazing EDA performance with NetApp AFF A400 flash storage

Innovium accelerates networking chip development with NetApp flash

Innovium, a designer of high-performance TERALYNX silicon switches used in hyperscale data centers, needed dramatically faster storage to support intensive electronic design automation (EDA) workloads. Their existing low‑cost storage could not sustain the tens of Gbps of bandwidth and tens of millions of NFS IOPS required for large silicon databases and rapid feature testing, creating a bottleneck that threatened time-to-market.

Innovium selected NetApp’s mid‑tier AFF A400 flash and ONTAP FlexGroup volumes after a performance shootout; the solution delivered higher performance than competitors’ top-tier systems while saving rack space and monthly costs. The unified, scalable architecture (40/100Gb NIC compatibility, NVMe support, and up to 24‑node expansion) sped EDA iterations, simplified management, accelerated product development, and produced substantial cost savings—so much so that Innovium’s CEO said they “would have saved millions” had they started with NetApp.

Innovium

Rajiv Khemani

CEO and Founder