Vault 2015

A new type of SSDs is under development, referred to as Open-Channel SSDs. These SSDs expose additional information about its geometry and enables the host to make internal data placement decisions on their behalf. By moving placement logic to the host, the design space for alternative storage interfaces that go beyond the traditional block device interface opens up. Examples of these interfaces include flash-optimized file-systems, and key-value stores.

This presentation will give an introduction to Open-Channels SSDs and the kernel integration, i.e., LightNVM. The main objective is to present this new storage interface and report on its support in the kernel. It will outline the open-channel SSD interface and abstraction model, the LightNVM kernel implementation, and the present two common targets: generic block interface and direct flash block access using a key-value interface.