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NVM Big at Storage Developer Conference SDC Precon

September 19, 2015September 21, 2015 Jim Handy Leave a comment

I’ll be speaking at SNIA’s SDC Pre-Conference this Sunday, Sept 20, about the new Intel-Micron 3D XPoint memory. I was surprised to find that my talk won’t be unique. There are about 15 papers at this conference that will be discussing NVM, or persistent memory.

What’s all this fuss about?

Part of it has to do with the introduction by Micron & Intel of their 3D XPoint (pronounced “Crosspoint”) memory. This new product will bring nonvolatility, or persistence, to main memory, and that’s big!

Intel itself will present a total of seven papers to tell us all how they envision this technology being used in computing applications. Seven other companies, in addition to Objective Analysis (my company) will also discuss this hot new topic.

SNIA is really on top of this new trend. This organization has been developing standards for nonvolatile memory for the past couple of years, and has published an NVM Programming Model to help software developers produce code that will communicate with nonvolatile memory no matter who supplies it. Prior to SNIA’s intervention the market was wildly inconsistent, and all suppliers’ NVDIMMs differed slightly from one another, with no promise that this would become any better once new memory technologies started to make their way onto memory modules.

Now that Intel and Micron will be producing their 3D XPoint memory, and will be supplying it on industry-standard DDR4 DIMMs, it’s good to know that there will be a standard protocol to communicate with it. This will facilitate the development of standard software to harness all that nonvolatile memory has to offer.

As for me, I will be sharing information from my company’s new report on the Micron-Intel 3D XPoint memory. This is new, and it’s exciting. Will it succeed? I’ll discuss that with you there.

SNIA’s Solid State Storage Initiative Advances the Industry at Flash Memory Summit

August 28, 2015August 28, 2015 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

A classic case of SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) member collaboration for industry advancement was on display in the SSSI booth for NVDIMM-N demonstration at the Flash Memory Summit (FMS) 2015. Under the direction of SSSI Chair Jim Ryan and coordinated by NVDIMM SIG co chairs Arthur Sainio and Jeff Chang and TechDev Committee chair Eden Kim, the SSSI was able to update and include NVDIMM-N storage performance in the SSSI marketing collaterals on the Summary Performance Comparison by Storage Class charts.

Five SSSI member companies – AgigA Tech, Calypso, Micron, SMART Modular, and Viking Technology – collaborated over a four week period on the introduction of a new NVDIMM-N storage performance demonstration. While it is rare to have potential competitors collaborate in such a fashion, NVDIMM-N storage represents a new paradigm for super fast, low latency, high IO/watt storage solutions. The NVDIMM-SIG has taken a leadership position by evangelizing the technology and developing the industry infrastructure necessary for large scale deployment.

This collaboration highlighted a classic blend of technical, marketing and industry association cooperation.

In the weeks leading up to FMS, the NVDIMM-SIG planned for an in-booth demonstration of the NVDIMM-N storage modules. To pave the way for universal adoption, the team worked together to dial in the Intel Open Source block IO development driver to meet the standards of the SNIA Performance Test Specification (PTS). An added goal was inclusion of NVDIMM-N modules as a new line item on the Summary Performance Comparison by Storage Class chart which lists PTS performance for various storage technologies. Under the guidance of NVDIMM-SIG, a rush project was instigated to get NVDIMM-N performance data tested to the PTS for the trade show.

Micron took the lead by lending a Supermicro server with Micron NVDIMM-N to Calypso for testing. Calypso then installed CTS test software on the server to allow full testing to the PTS. Viking and SMART Modular contributed by helping dial in the drivers, as well as sending modules from Viking and SMART Modular to cross reference with the Micron modules. The test plan was comprised of several test iterations using single, dual and finally quad modules using each of the vendor contributed modules.

The early single and dual module tests ran into repeatability and stability issues. NVDIMM-SIG consulted with Intel on the nuance of the Intel block IO driver while Calypso continued testing. The team successfully completed a test run that met the PTS steady state requirements on the quad module in time to release data for the show.

We had a solid demonstration at the SNIA SSSI Flash Memory Summit Booth on NVDIMM-N Performance complete with marketing collateral available for review and a handout. NVDIMM-SIG members responded to the many questions and interest in the NVDIMM-N storage technology.

“Once again,” said SSSI Chair Jim Ryan, “we can see the value and benefit of SNIA SSSI to its members, the SNIA educational community and the NVDIMM industry. I believe this is a great case study in how we all can contribute and benefit from working within the SSSI for the betterment of individual companies, market development and the Solid State Storage industry at large.” SSSI provides educational and marketing materials free of charge on its public website while SNIA SSSI members may join the NVDIMM-SIG and other SSSI committees. Anyone interested to find out more about the SSSI or any of its many committees can go to the following link http://www.snia.org/sssi.

New SNIA SSSI Webcast May 28 on Persistent Memory Advances

May 22, 2015May 22, 2015 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

Join the NVDIMM Special Interest Group for an informative SNIA Brighttalk webcast on Persistent Memory Advances: Solutions with Endurance, Performance & Non-Volatility on Thursday, May 28, 2015 at 12:00 noon Eastern/9:00 am Pacific. Register at http://www.snia.org/news_events/multimedia#webcasts

Mario Martinez of Netlist, a SNIA SSSI NVDIMM SIG member, will discuss how persistent memory solutions deliver the endurance and performance of DRAM coupled with the non-volatility of Flash. This webinar will also update you on the latest solutions for enterprise server and storage designs, and provide insights into future persistent memory advances. A specific focus will be NVDIMM solutions, with examples from the member companies of the SNIA NVDIMM Special Interest Group.

Solid State Summit Webinar Presentations Now Available for Viewing

April 30, 2015May 1, 2015 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

The April 21/22, 2015 Solid State Storage Summit, presented by SNIA and the Evaluator Group on the SNIA Brighttalk Channel, was a great success. Attendees raved about the high quality content and knowledgable speakers.

Did you miss it?

No worries! Now you can listen to SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative experts and analysts from the Evaluator Group on the latest updates on Solid State Technology. Click on the title of each presentation to listen to this great technical information.

Day 1 – Solid State Systems – 5 different webcasts from Intel, Load Dynamix, Evaluator Group, EMC, and HP

Day 2 – Solid State Components – 5 different webcasts from the San Diego Supercomputer Center, NetApp, Micron, Toshiba, and SMART Modular

MRAM Topic of Open SSSI TechDev Committee Call Monday February 2 at 2:00 pm PT

January 30, 2015January 30, 2015 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

As part of their educational offering, the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative TechDev committee will feature Barry Hoberman speaking on Spin Transfer and MRAM.

This conference call and SNIA WebEx at 2:00 pm Pacific time February 2, 2015 is open to the public. Find the answers to your questions on Spin Transfer/MRAM, including:

What are the drivers pushing emergence / adoption of Spin Transfer / MRAM?
What are the compelling advantages of Spin Transfer / MRAM?
What are the key applications that will be able to take advantage of MRAM?
What has to happen for Spin Transfer to find traction and deployment?
When will Spin Transfer / MRAM market adoption take place?

Dial-in to: snia.webex.com Meeting Number: 794 116 066 password: TechDev2015 Teleconference: 1-866-439-4480 Passcode: 57236696#

Looking forward to seeing you!

Volunteers Honored at SNIA Symposium

January 23, 2015January 23, 2015 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI), its affiliated Technical Work Groups (TWGs), and its individual members were honored at this week’s SNIA Member Symposium in San Jose, California.

From left, Paul Wassenberg, Marvell (SNIA SSSI Chair);
Paul Von Behren, Intel (SNIA NVM Programming TWG Co-Chair);
Jim Ryan, Intel (SNIA SSSI Marketing Chair);
and Arthur Sainio, SMART Modular (SNIA NVDIMM SIG Co-Chair)

At Wednesday’s SNIA member recognition event, five awards were bestowed based on votes by their colleagues in the Association:

1. MOST OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS OF A SNIA TECHNOLOGY COMMUNITY – SSSI (for the second year in a row)

2. MOST SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS BY A COMMITTEE – NVDIMM SIG (in their first year of existence)

3. MOST SIGNIFICANT IMPACT BY A TECHNICAL WORK GROUP – NVM Programming TWG (adding to all the other awards it has received in the past 2 years)

4. VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR – Jim Ryan (who in addition to managing the Storage Industry Summit for two years in a row, is also the SSSI Marketing co-chair)

5. INDUSTRY IMPACT AWARD – Paul von Behren, NVM Programming TWG chair (and tireless advocate of NVM technology)

In addition, Phil Mills, SNIA SSSI Founding Chair, was inducted into the SNIA Hall of Fame.

More details are available at www.snia.org/about/awards.

Congratulations to these SNIA volunteers and groups, who are poised for a great 2015!

SNIA NVM Programming Technical Work Group Honored at Storage Visions Conference

January 7, 2015January 7, 2015 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

On January 4, 2015, the SNIA NVM Programming Technical Work Group received the Storage Visions 2015 Professional Storage Development Visionary Award ,

Storage Visions, a partner program of the Consumer Electronics Show, showcases digital storage and the entertainment content value chain as the storage conference of CES.

The Storage Visions “Visionary” Awards recognize companies advancing the state of the art in storage technologies utilized in consumer electronics, the media and entertainment industries; visionary products for the digital content value chain; and digital storage end users.

This most recent honor recognizes TWG work on creating next generation programming models, and follows an August 2014 award to the NVM Programming Model as a Best of Show at Flash Memory Summit for the Most Innovative Flash Memory Enterprise Business Application.

The SNIA Non Volatile Memory (NVM) Programming Technical Work Group (TWG) delivers specifications describing the behavior of a common set of software interfaces that provide access to non-volatile memory (NVM). The TWG goal is to encourage a common ecosystem for NVM-enabled software without limiting the ability to innovate.

The TWG’s current work is the NVM Programming Model specification. This specification describes behavior used by applications and kernel components to access:

Emerging features for traditional block NVM (SSDs) and
A new programming model for persistent memory (PM) – NVM hardware designed to be treated by software similarly to system memory.

SSSI Sheds Light on Solid State Storage at Flash Memory Summit

August 22, 2013August 22, 2013 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

If you attended Flash Memory Summit along with thousands of other business professionals, you soon learned that solid state keynotes, breakouts, and show floor booths, while informative, could be mystifying. Fortunately, the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) was at FMS to provide enlightenment in the form of a SSS Reception, four new publications on SSS, and three SSSI member demonstrations.

SSSI’s second annual SSS Reception was attended by over 90 individuals and featured presentations by SSSI Governing Board members Paul Wassenberg of Marvell, Walt Hubis of Fusion-io, and Eden Kim of Calypso Systems on SSSI key programs and technical work. SSSI Education Chair Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates delivered a market update on ubiquitous flash memory. All SSSI members are eligible and encouraged to join specification development, education, and outreach programs, and new companies are welcome to join SSSI activities.

At the SSSI Booth, attendees snapped up new white papers and Tech Notes authored by SSSI members. These papers are complimentary to all interested individuals and available on the SSSI education page.

The PCI Express (PCIe) 101 – An Overview of Standards, Markets, and Performance white paper surveys the broad landscape of emerging high performance PCIe storage and the implications of revolutionary applications of these new architectures. Thirteen members of the SNIA SSSI PCIe SSD Committee representing eleven SNIA and SSSI member companies contributed their technical expertise to this paper, which covers standards, programming models for non-volatile memory, the PCIe SSD market, and PCIe SSD performance.
The SSD Performance – A Primer white paper, authored by SNIA SSS Technical Work Group chair Eden Kim of Calypso Systems, provides an introduction to solid state drive performance, evaluation, and test. As noted in the Foreword by SSSI Founder and 2008-2010 SSSI Chair Phil Mills of IBM, “this paper is an excellent tutorial on the performance of solid state drives, which covers this topic in a very easy to understand way, yet provides detailed technical information that the reader can either dig into for a better understanding, or simply skip without missing the main points”.
A new PTS User Guide Tech Note delivers the hows and whys of the SNIA Solid State Performance Test Specification. Authored by SNIA SSSI members Eden Kim of Calypso Systems and Chuck Paradon of HP, this Tech Note provides an easy to understand, step-by step guide to using the SNIA SSS Performance Test Specification (PTS) test methodologies and tests. The Tech Note discusses four basic PTS 1.1 tests – Write Saturation (WSAT), IOPS, Throughput (TP) and Response Time (or Latency) – as updated per SNIA draft PTS-E version 1.1.
The SSSI Workload I/O Capture Program (WIOCP) FAQ, authored by SNIA SSSI member Tom West of hyperI/O LLC, gives details on this project undertaken by the SNIA SSSI to collect I/O operation performance metrics. These empirical metrics reflect the actual I/O operation activity performed during normal, everyday application/workload usage spanning both consumer/client and enterprise systems.

Also in the booth, the Media, Entertainment and Scientific Storage (MESS) Meetup group chatted with end users, and SSSI members exhibited new solid state storage solutions for enterprise markets:

BitMicro presented a high performance MaxIO drive incorporating BiTMICRO’s ultra fast Talino Quad Core ASIC controller, which integrates embedded processors with a high speed multi-bus design to achieve performance far beyond legacy solid state designs.
Fastor Systems unveiled a NVMe compliant PCIe software defined storage device (SDS), or post-controller SSD, in which a de-coupled control & data plane together with a non-blocking fabric and message based architecture provide both high throughput and low latency to address the needs of today’s hyperscale datacenters.
Micron showcased a P420m PCIe SSD featuring multilevel (MLC) NAND technology.

Join the SSSI at Flash Memory Summit August 12-15 in Santa Clara CA!

August 7, 2013August 7, 2013 Marty Foltyn Leave a comment

SSSI returns to the Flash Memory Summit in booth 808, featuring information on updates on new tests in the SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification-Enterprise 1.1, NVM programming, and Workload I/O Capture Program (WIOCP) activities; new tech notes and white papers, including a PTS User Guide Tech Note, a PCIe SSD 101 Whitepaper, and a Performance Primer Whitepaper; and PCIe SSD demonstrations from SSSI members Bitmicro, Fastor, and Micron.

All current SSSI members attending FMS and individuals from companies interested in the SSSI and their activities are cordially invited to the SSSI Solid State Storage Reception Monday evening August 12 from 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm in Room 209-210 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. At the reception, SSSI Education Chair Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates will provide an overview of the SSD market, and SSSI Chair Paul Wassenberg of Marvell will discuss SSD performance. SSSI Vice Chair Walt Hubis of Fusion-io will discuss SSSI programs, including PTS, NVM Programming, Workload I/O Capture, and PCIe SSD. Refreshments, table displays, and an opportunity drawing for SSDs provided by SSSI members Intel, Micron, and OCZ will be featured.

FMS conference activities begin August 13, and the agenda can be found here. SSSI members speaking and chairing panels include:

Tuesday August 13

4:35 pm – Paul Wassenberg of Marvell on Standards

Wednesday August 14

8:30 am – Eden Kim and Easen Ho of Calypso Testers – PCIe Power Budgets, Performance, and Deployment

9:50 am – Eden Kim and Easen Ho of Calypso Testers – SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification

3:10 pm – Walt Hubis of Fusion-io – Revolutionizing Application Development Using NVM Storage Software

3:10 pm – Easen Ho of Calypso Testers – SSD Testing Challenges

4:30 pm – Paul von Behren of Intel – SNIA Tutorial: SNIA NVM Programming Model: Optimizing Software for Flash

Thursday August 15

3:10 pm – Jim Pappas of Intel – PCI Express and Enterprise SSDs

3:10 pm – Jim Handy of Objective Analysis – Market Research

An open “Chat with the Experts” roundtable session Tuesday August 13 at 7:00 pm will feature Jim Pappas of Intel at a Standards table, Eden Kim of Calypso Testers at a SSD Performance table, Easen Ho of Calypso Testers at a Testing table, and Paul Wassenberg of Marvell at a SATA Express table.

The Media Entertainment and Scientific Storage (MESS) will hold their August “Meetup” at the Open Chat with the Experts, and also be located in SSSI Booth 808 for further discussions.

Exhibit admission is complimentary until August 8. SNIA and SSSI members and colleagues can receive a $100 discount on either the 3-day conference or the 1-day technical program using the code SNIA at www.flashmemorysummit.com.

Free Booklet: How SSD Controllers Maximize SSD Life

February 5, 2013February 5, 2013 Jim Handy Leave a comment

SNIA’s SSSI has introduced a new booklet: How Controllers Maximize SSD Life. This 20-page volume, which can be downloaded as a pdf for free from the SNIA website, is a compilation of a series of blog posts on the SSD Guy blog.

The booklet explains the tricks SSD controller designers use to extend NAND flash life far beyond the limits posed by NAND endurance specifications of 10,000 or fewer erase/write cycles.

The series was written by this blogger with important help from companies like Intel, SMART Storage, Marvell, and Calypso Systems.

Hard copies are available through the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative.