VDURA boss: Your x86 clusters are obsolete, metadata is eating 20% of I/O, and every idle GPU second burns cash

The supercomputing landscape is fracturing. What once was a relatively unified world of massive multi-processor x86 systems has splintered into competing architectures, each racing to serve radically different masters: traditional academic workloads, extreme-scale physics simulations, and the voracious appetite of AI training runs.

At the center of this upheaval stands Nvidia, whose GPU revolution has not just made inroads, and it has detonated the old order entirely.

The consequences are stark. Legacy storage systems that powered decades of scientific breakthroughs now buckle under AI's relentless, random I/O storms. Facilities designed for sequential throughput face a new reality where metadata can consume 20 percent of all I/O operations. And as GPU clusters scale into the thousands, a brutal economic truth emerges: every second of GPU idle time bleeds money, transforming storage from a support function into a make-or-break competitive advantage.

We sat down with Ken Claffey, CEO of ...