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?
MC: The dominant form to deliver Persistent Memory products is Non-Volatile DIMMs (NVDIMMs). SNIA Board Member Rob Peglar, along with Stephen Bates, SNIA NVM Programming Technical Work Group member, and Arthur Sainio, SNIA Persistent Memory and NVDIMM Special Interest Group Co-Chair, deliver a great explanation of Persistent Memory in this video. SNIA also has an infographic and a cookbook to get you started.
SOS: Where should those interested in developing Persistent Memory applications look for knowledge?
MC: Persistent Memory is having a large impact on both infrastructure and applications. Andy Rudoff of the SNIA NVM Programming Technical Work Group has a great introduction to this. SNIA has created the NVM Programming Model standard so that applications can take advantage of the increased performance. Andy explores this topic as well in this video.
SNIA’s annual Persistent Memory Summit also had some great videos and talks on this topic. so attendees should explore that content as well. And check out our videos and BrightTalk presentations on this topic.
SOS: OK, so now I’ve done my homework and am ready for SDC 2018. What sessions should I look for?
MC: At SDC, don’t miss:
The Long & Winding Road to Persistent Memories presented by Dr. Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates and Jim Handy of Objective Analysis (Wednesday September 26, 3:05 pm in Cypress)
Persistent Memory is getting a lot of attention. SNIA has released a programming standard, NVDIMM makers, with the help of JEDEC, have created standardized hardware to develop & test PM, and chip makers continue to promote upcoming devices, although few are currently available. In this talk two industry analysts, Jim Handy & Tom Coughlin, will provide the state of Persistent Memory and show a realistic roadmap of what the industry can expect to see and when they can expect to see it. The presentation, based on three critical reports covering New Memory Technologies, NVDIMMs, and Intel’s 3D XPoint Memory (also known as Optane) will illustrate the Persistent Memory market, the technologies that vie to play a role, and the critical economic obstacles that continue to impede these technologies’ progress. We will also explore how advanced logic process technologies are likely to cause persistent memories to become a standard ingredient in embedded applications, such as IoT nodes long before they make sense in servers.
Update on the SNIA Persistent Memory Programming Model in Theory and Practice presented by Andy Rudoff of Intel (Thursday, September 27, 8:30 am in Cypress)
As a charter member of the SNIA NVM Programming TWG, Andy has seen the Persistent Memory Programming model through its multi-year life so far and has collaborated with various operating system vendors in their implementations. Andy will go over the current state of the programming model, including ongoing work and some interesting efforts in our future. While going over the theory published in the SNIA specifications, Andy will report on the actual features that were implemented and what’s available today in the ecosystem.
SNIA Nonvolatile Memory Programming TWG – Remote Persistent Memory presented by Tom Talpey of Microsoft (Thursday, September 27, 9:30 am in Cypress)
The SNIA NVMP TWG continues to make significant progress on defining the architecture for interfacing applications to PM. In this talk, Tom Talpey, an architect in remote storage and networking at Microsoft and an active member of SNIA NVM Persistent Memory Technical Work Group, will focus on the important Remote Persistent Memory scenario, and how the NVMP TWG’s programming model applies. Application use of these interfaces, along with fabric support such as RDMA and platform extensions, are part of this, and the talk will describe how the larger ecosystem fits together to support PM as low-latency remote storage
SOS: You’ve convinced us to attend – so where do we go for more information?
MC – It will be great to see all those developing or looking to develop with Persistent Memory at SDC, where we will do our deep dive. Other talks will cover PM performance, available open source libraries, and integration with filesystems. Go here to register for the conference and learn more about the agenda and speakers.
SOS – Great to chat with you and looking forward to our next dive – into orchestration.