Author: Jim Handy

NVM Big at Storage Developer Conference SDC Precon

Jim Handy

Objective Analysis 3D XPoint Report GraphicI’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, other than 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.

Free Booklet: How SSD Controllers Maximize SSD Life

Jim Handy

SNIA SSD Controller BookSNIA’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.

Introducing SNIA’s Workload I/O Capture Program

Jim Handy

SNIA’s Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) recently rolled out its new Workload I/O Capture Program, or WIOCP, a simple tool that captures software applications’ I/O activity by gathering statistics on workloads at the user level (IOPS, MB/s, response times queue depths, etc.)

The WIOCP helps users to identify “Hot Spots” where storage performance is creating bottlenecks.  SNIA hopes that users will help the association to collect real-use statistics on workloads by uploading their results to the SNIA website.

Using this information SNIA member companies will be able to improve the performance of their solid state storage solutions, including SSDs and flash storage arrays.

How it Works

The WIOCP software is a safe and thoroughly-tested tool which runs unobtrusively in the background to constantly capture a large set of SSD and HDD I/O metrics that are useful to both the computer user and to SNIA.

Users simply enter the drive letters for those drives for which I/O operations metrics are to be collected.   The program does not record anything that might be sensitive, including details of your actual workload (for example, files you’ve accessed.)   Results are presented in clear and accessible report formats.

How can WIOCP Help You?

Users can collect (and optionally display in real time) information reflecting their current environment and operations with the security of a tool delivered with digital authentication for their protection.

The collected I/O metrics will provide information useful to evaluate an SSD system environment.

Statistics from a wide range of applications will be collected, and can be used with the SSS Performance Test Specification to help users determine which SSD should  perform best for them.

How can Your Participation Help SNIA and the SSSI?

The WIOCP provides unique, raw information that can be analyzed by SNIA’s Technical Work Groups (TWGs) including the IOTTA TWG to gain insights into workload characteristics, key performance metrics, and SSD design tradeoffs.

The collected data from all participants will be aggregated and publicly available for download and analysis. No personally identifiable information is collected – participants will benefit from this information pool without comprising their privacy or confidentiality.

Downloading the WIOCP

Help SNIA get started on this project by clicking HERE and using the “Download Key Code”: SSSI52kd9A8Z.

The WIOCP tool will be delivered to your system with a unique digital signature.  The tool only takes a few minutes to download and initialize, after which users can return to the task at hand!

If you have any questions or comments, please contact: SSSI_TechDev-Chair@SNIA.org

Quick PTS Implementation

Jim Handy

PTS ProcedureNeed an abbreviated version of the SNIA SSD Performance Test Specification (PTS) in a hurry?  Jamon Bowen of Texas Memory Systems (TMS) whipped up a simple implementation of certain key parts of the PTS that can be run on a Linux system and interpreted in Excel.

It’s a free download on his Storage Tuning blog.

This is a boon for anyone that might want to run a internal preliminary test before pursuing a more formal route.

The bash script uses the Flexible I/O utility (FIO) to run through part of the SSSI PTS.  FIO does the heavy lifting, and the script manages it.  The script outputs comma separated (CSV) data and the download includes an Excel pivot table that helps format the results and select the measurement window.

Since this is a bare-bones implementation the SSD must be initialized manually before the test script is run.

The test runs the IOPS Test from the PTS.  This test covers a range of block sizes, read/write ratios and iterates until the steady state for the device is reached (with a maximum of 25 iterations).  Altogether the test takes over a day to run.

Once the test is complete, the downloadable pivot tables allow users to select the steady-state measurement window and report the data in a recommended format.

See Mr. Bowen’s blog at http://storagetuning.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/sssi-performance-test-specification/ for details on this valuable download.