Up to the Challenge!

The SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM Special Interest Group announced a programming challenge for NVDIMM-based systems in Q4 of 2019.  Participants get free online access to persistent memory systems based at the SNIA Technology Center using NVDIMM-Ns provided by SIG members AgigA Tech, Intel, SMART Modular, and Supermicro.  The goal of the challenge is to spark interest by developers in this new technology so they can understand more clearly how persistent memory applications can be developed and applied in 2020 environments and beyond. Response to the NVDIMM Programming Challenge has been very positive.  Entrants to date have backgrounds from no experience programming persistent memory to those who develop persistent memory applications as part of their day jobs. Read More

Judging Has Begun – Submit Your Entry for the NVDIMM Programming Challenge!

We’re 11 months in to the Persistent Memory Hackathon program, and over 150 software developers have taken the tutorial and tried their hand at programming to persistent memory systems.   AgigA Tech, Intel SMART Modular, and Supermicro, members of the SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM SIG, have now placed persistent memory systems with NVDIMM-Ns into the SNIA Technology Center as the backbone of the first SNIA NVDIMM Programming Challenge.

Interested in participating?  Send an email to PMhackathon@snia.org to get your credentials.  And do so quickly, as the first round of review for the SNIA NVDIMM Programming Challenge is now open.  Any entrants who have progressed to a point where they would like a review are welcome to contact SNIA at PMhackathon@snia.org to request a time slot.  SNIA will be opening review times in December and January as well.  Submissions that meet a significant amount of the judging criteria described below, as determined by the panel, will be eligible for a demonstration slot to show the 400+ attendees at the January 23, 2020 Persistent Memory Summit  in Santa Clara CA.

Your program or results should be able to be visually demonstrated using remote access to a PM-enabled server. Submissions will be judged by a panel of SNIA experts.  Reviews will be scheduled at the convenience of the submitter and judges, and done via conference call.

NVDIMM Programming Challenge Judging Criteria include:

Use of multiple aspects of NVDIMM/PM capabilities, for example:

  1. Use of larger DRAM/NVDIMM memory sizes
  2. Use of the DRAM speed of NVDIMM PMEM for performance
  3. Speed-up of application shut down or restart using PM where appropriate
  4. Recovery from crash/failure
  5. Storage of data across application or system restarts

Demonstrates other innovative aspects for a program or tool, for example:

  1. Uses persistence to enable new features
  2. Appeals across multiple aspects of a system, beyond persistence

Advances the cause of PM in some obvious way:

  1. Encourages the update of systems to broadly support PM
  2. Makes PM an incremental need in IT deployments

Program or results apply to all types of NVDIMM/PM systems, though exact results may vary across memory types.

Questions? Contact Jim Fister, SNIA Hackathon Program Director, at pmhackathon@snia.org, and happy coding!

SNIA Volunteer Work Wins Recognition at Flash Memory Summit

SNIA thanks and celebrates the many hardworking SNIA member volunteers whose technical work was awarded Best of Show at the recent Flash Memory Summit.

Jennifer Dietz and Eden Kim accept FMS award from Jay Kramer

SNIA won the FMS Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology Award, recognizing innovations that will change the way flash memory works and is used in products, for the SNIA Technical Position Real World Storage Workloads Performance Test Specification (RWSW PTS), developed by the SNIA Solid State Storage Technical Work Group (SSS TWG). “Real World Workloads are important for Data Center, IT, and Storage professionals,” said Eden Kim, Chair of the SSS TWG, and CEO of SNIA member company Calypso Systems “because real world workloads are very different from synthetic lab workloads and are key determinants in datacenter server and storage performance, optimization and qualification.”   Eden and Jennifer Dietz of SNIA member company Intel and Co-Chair of the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative Marketing Committee accepted the award from Jay Kramer of Flash Memory Summit.

Mark Carlson and Bill Martin accept award on behalf of SNIA from Jay Kramer

SNIA also won the FMS Best of show Technology Innovation Award, recognizing that cloud and other large data centers typically prioritize their selection criteria for storage solutions as those that can achieve the highest possible performance while avoiding proprietary vendor lock-in.  SNIA and EXTEN HyperDynamic™ NVMe over Fabrics high-performance storage software were recognized for creating an open storage management specification that works with EXTEN storage software for being the first in the industry to provide a solution based on SNIA Swordfish™ and DMTF Redfish® specifications. “We congratulate EXTEN Technologies for its innovation and well-deserved accolade,” said Don Deel, SNIA Storage Management Initiative Governing Board Chair. “By integrating SNIA Swordfish into its solution, EXTEN Technologies’ customers will benefit from a standards-based API that does not require learning the intricacies of storage infrastructure to handle day-to-day storage needs.” Accepting the award for SNIA at FMS were Mark Carlson of SNIA member company Toshiba Memory Systems and Bill Miller of SNIA member company Samsung Electronics, Co-Chairs of the SNIA Technical Council. Congratulations to all the SNIA volunteers who participated in the development of these award-winning specifications. SNIA Sessions at FMS Now Available for Viewing and Download Read More

Dive Into SDC – A Chat with SNIA Technical Council Co-Chair Mark Carlson on Persistent Memory

The SNIA Storage Developer Conference (SDC) is coming up September 24-27, 2018 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara CA.  The agenda is now live!

SNIA on Storage is ready to dive into major themes of the 2018 conference, starting with Persistent Memory.   The SNIA Technical Council takes a leadership role to develop the content for each SDC, so SNIA on Storage spoke with Mark Carlson, SNIA Technical Council Co-Chair and Principal Engineer, Industry Standards, Toshiba Memory America, to understand why SDC is bringing Persistent Memory to conference attendees.

SNIA on Storage (SOS) – Why has the Technical Council chosen Persistent Memory as a major topic for 2018?

Mark Carlson (MC) – For a number of years, SNIA has been a key contributor to industry activities driving system memory and storage into a single Persistent Memory entity.  For Developers just being introduced to this new technology, SNIA has a multitude of educational resources that can be used to come up to speed on Persistent Memory and make the most of their time at SDC 2018.

SOS – Where should attendees begin? Read More

Exceptional Agenda on Tap for 2018 Persistent Memory Summit

Persistent Memory (PM) has made tremendous strides since SNIA’s first Non-Volatile Memory Summit in 2013. With a name change to Persistent Memory Summit in 2017, that event continued the buzz with 350+ attendees and a focus turning to applications. Now in 2018, the agenda for the SNIA Persistent Memory Summit, upcoming January 24 at the Westin San Jose, reflects the integration of PM in a number of organizations. Zvonimir Bandic of Western Digital Corporation will kick off the day exploring the “exabyte challenge” of persistent memory centric architectures and memory fabrics. The fairly new frontier of Persistent Memory over Fabrics (PMoF) returns as a topic with speakers from Open Fabrics Alliance, Cray, Eideticom, and Mellanox. Performance is always evolving, and Micron Technologies, Enmotus, and Calypso Systems will give their perspectives. And the day will dive into futures of media with speakers from Nantero and Spin Transfer Technologies, and a panel led by HPE will review new interfaces and how they relate to PM. Read More

A Q&A on Containers and Persistent Memory

The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative recently hosted a live webcast “Containers and Persistent Memory.” Where my colleagues and I discussed persistent storage for containers, persistent memory for containers, infrastructure software changes for persistent memory-based containers, and what SNIA is doing to advance persistent memory. If you missed the live event, it’s now available on-demand. You can also download a PDF of the webcast slides. Read More

Unlock the Power of Persistent Memory in Containers

Containers and persistent memory are both very hot topics these days. Containers are making it easier for developers to know that their software will run, no matter where it is deployed and no matter what the underlying OS is as both Linux and Windows are now fully supported. Persistent memory, a revolutionary data storage technology, will boost the performance of next-generation packaging of applications and libraries into containers. On July 27th, SNIA is hosting a live webcast “Containers and Persistent Memory.” Read More

Around the World, It’s a Persistent Memory Summer

This summer, join SNIA as they evangelize members’ industry activity to advance the convergence of storage and memory. SNIA is participating in the first annual European In-Memory Computing Summit, June 20-21, 2017 at the Movenpick Hotel in Amsterdam.  SNIA Europe Vice-Chair and SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) Co-Chair Alex McDonald of NetApp keynotes a session on SNIA and Persistent Memory, highlighting SNIA work on an NVM programming model and persistent memory solutions available today and SNIA is a sponsor in the exhibit hall. Read More

Your Questions Answered on Non-Volatile DIMMs

  by Arthur Sainio, SNIA NVDIMM SIG Co-Chair, SMART Modular SNIA’s Non-Volatile DIMM (NVDIMM) Special Interest Group (SIG) had a tremendous response to their most recent webcast:  NVDIMM:  Applications are Here!  You can view the webcast on demand. Viewers had many questions during the webcast.  In this blog, the NVDIMM SIG answers those questions and shares the SIG’s knowledge of NVDIMM technology. Have a question?  Send it to nvdimmsigchair@snia.org. 1. What about 3DXpoint, how will this technology impact the market? Read More