SNIA Developer Conference September 15-17, 2025 | Santa Clara, CA
Marek Rychlik
CEO of Xoralgo Inc., Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona, co-inventor of a patented RAID and ECC technology
Xoralgo, Inc
Marek Rychlik received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983. He pursued research in several fields of mathematics as part of his employment at several major universities and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. Currently he is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. He published his research in most prestigious journals. He is a recipient of Monroe Martin Prize for a best paper in Applied Mathematics by a mathematician under 35 years of age. His paper completely solving the Equichordal Point Problem, a problem that eluded mathematician for 80-years, was published in Inventiones Mathematicae, one of the two renowned journals in the field. Professor Rychlik has pursued a number of problems of applied nature, which led him to become an entrepreneur and inventor, and a CEO of a University start-up company, Xoralgo. Inc. Professor Rychlik investigated the problem of finding an error correcting code which is as efficient as the 30-year old RAID 6 error correcting code, without a computational overhead, for over a decade. In 2017, in collaboration with his Ph.D. student Mohamand Moussa, he succeeded at finding such a code. This code, based on quintuple parity, extends the mean time to data loss (MTDL) from days for current RAID 6 to 100 quadrillion years (20 orderd of magnitude), and it as computationally efficient as RAID 6. The invention led to a US utility patent issued in May 2021, and is the cornerstone of Xoralgo's new RAID implementation, called PentaRAID.
Related Sessions
A Quintuple Parity Error Correcting Code - A Game Changer in Data Protection
We describe a replacement for RAID 6, based on a new linear, systematic code, which detects and corrects any combination of E errors (unknown location) and Z erasures (known location) provided that Z+2E≤4. The code is at the core of a RAID technology called PentaRAID, for which the two co-inventors were awarded a US utility patent. The problem that we address is that of weak data protection of RAID 6 systems. The known vulnerability is that RAID 6 may recover from not more than 2 failed disks in a RAID, if we know which disks failed. If we do not know which disks are the source of errors, we are protected from only 1 disk failure. Moreover, if 1 disk fails, the failed data needs to be recovered, and with hard disks reaching 40TB, the recovery process lasts for weeks (degraded mode). While in degraded mode, the second disk failure results in a system with no error detection and correction. In addition, Undetected Disk Errors (UDE) can only be detected but not corrected event with one failed disk. The natural solution is to increase redundancy from 2 to more disks. There is very little payoff from using 3 disks. It turns out that a practical solution is possible with 5 redundant disks, and this solution is employed in PentaRAID. The payoff is immense, as the RAID extends Mean Time to Data Loss (MTDL) from days to far beyond the age of the universe (100 quadrillion years) under typical assumptions in regard to disk error rates. The new RAID can tolerate a loss of 2 drives at unknown locations (thus seemingly operating normally but generating UDE), and up to 4 disks at known locations, e.g. due to power failure (typically detected by the disk controller). In addition, the recovery process involves a fixed, small number of Galois field operations per error, and therefore has virtually fixed computational cost per error, independent of the number of disks in the array. Parity calculation has also constant time per byte of data, if distributed computation is utilized. In short, the computational complexity is on the par with that of RAID 6. Notably, the solution does not require Chien search commonly used in Reed-Solomon coding, which makes it possible to utilize large Galois fields. The application of the new technology will dramatically increase data durability with significant reduction of the number of hard disks necessary to maintain data integrity, and will simplify the logistics of operating RAID in degraded mode and recovery from disk failures.