Paper Title: Accelerating Applications with Flexible NVMe SSD Design Optimization

Paper Abstract: SSDs already offer much higher storage performance than hard drives. However, their architectures are still inflexible and do not allow their potential to be fully realized. Many common applications could take advantage of different tradeoffs in terms of read/write performance, endurance, capacity, security, and data integrity than manufacturers commonly provide. A more flexible SSD architecture, based on customized firmware and programmable controllers, would allow storage designers to tune solutions to application and system priorities, leading to large performance increases. A practical new NVMe SSD design implements the required optimizations covering flash choice, firmware, hardware acceleration, and data structures. Experimental results show promising improvements for common performance-limited applications.

Paper Author: Tao Zhong, CTO, NETINT Technologies

Author Bio: Tao Zhong is CTO for NETINT Technologies, an emerging startup focused on delivering NVMe storage solutions for enterprise customers. He is in charge of developing high-performance SoCs for flash controllers. Before joining NETINT, Tao was Director of PMC-Sierra's Enterprise Storage Division, a long-time leader in flash controllers for enterprise applications. He has over 20 years of experience developing high performance storage SoCs. Tao earned an MSEE at the University of British Columbia. He holds several storage patents.