The

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Cache Acceleration Software (CAS) is a

computer data storage Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data (computing), data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central pro ...

product for

solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is ...

(SSD) caching.

Description

CAS manages using the SSD storage as a cache layer for slower storage data (e.g. spinning hard drives). A cached copy of recently used data from slower storage is kept in faster SSD storage to improve I/O performance. CAS entered Intel's product line as the result of Intel's August 2012 acquisition of a Canadian start-up company Nevex Virtual Technologies; Intel re-branded Nevex CacheWorks product to CAS with the release of version 2.0 in December 2012. Versions of Intel CAS are available for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Enterprise, Windows Workstation, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

.Intel releases SSD cache acceleration software for Linux servers - Computerworld
/ref> CAS for Windows is an application-aware file-based cache, which can be tuned by system administrators. Additionally, it integrates with the operating system's

buffer cache In computing, a page cache, sometimes also called disk cache, is a transparent cache for the pages originating from a secondary storage device such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD). The operating system keeps a page cache ...

, creating a multi-tier cache architecture. CAS is also aware of some

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

technologies like

vMotion VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

, maintaining a hot SSD cache during a VM migration. CAS works with the enterprise-class Intel SSD products, such as the DC S3700 SATA drives and the DC P3700 NVMe

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

devices. It also works with cache devices across SANs. Intel CAS for Linux consists of a GPL'd source loadable kernel module paired with a closed source user-space admin configuration tool. The CAS for Linux version supports CentOS,

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop version ...

and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.Intel Cache Acceleration Software - YouTube
/ref> The Windows Enterprise version currently runs only on the 64-bit flavors of

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2 is the fifth version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft and released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became General av ...

SP1 and

Windows Server 2012 Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the sixth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows 8 and succe ...

R2; 32-bit versions are not currently supported. The Windows Workstation version currently runs on only the 64-bit flavors of Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10; 32-bit versions are not currently supported. The current version of CAS for Linux supports write-through, write-back, and write-around caching. The Windows versions of CAS support

write-through In computing, a cache ( ) is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhe ...

and write-back caching.Intel Cache Acceleration Software: FAQ Configuration and Use
/ref> A workstation version, called CAS-W, was announced in September 2013 by

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

; Dell's announcement states an exclusive agreement with Intel to offer CAS-W only for

Dell Precision Dell Precision is a series of computer workstations for CAD/architecture/ CG professionals, or as small-scale business servers. Dell Precision Mobile Workstations 3000, 5000, 7000 Series (2015–current) Dell announced a new seri ...

workstations.Intel Cache Acceleration Software with Dell and Autodesk - YouTube
/ref>

Operating System and File System Support

Intel CAS for Linux

Intel CAS for Windows Enterprise

Intel CAS for Windows Workstation

References

External links

*
Open CAS FrameworkOld blog post on the (now defunct) Nevex web site explaining the basic idea behind CacheWorks
{{Intel Solid-state caching Intel acquisitions Intel products