As smart as SSDs are, and despite all the innovations they’ve made, they’re not perfect.
Three problems:
SSDs excel in random read workloads.However, today, sequential write and write/multi-read workloads are not unusual in large-scale workloads and big data.
The Flash translation layer that allows a block-based media to emulate a 4K disk sector, with playback/program/removal of I/O and a garbage collection, is optimal for those new paint loads.So the openchannel paints and zoom flash units.
Fortunately, this painting is based on what has already been done for Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) discs, whose characteristics are logically those of the NAND flash.Like SMR, Openchannel writes sequentially in a variety of logical block addresses (LAOs), with the option for parallel units, where LAUs can be divided among other paint loads and distributed over the underlying environment for maximum performance.
ZNS divides SSD capacity into zones, and each domain is written sequentially, with an SSD-optimized interface.The length of the domain aligns with the lengths of the flash blocks, and the capacity of the domain aligns with the physical lengths.
This allows for full flash block writes, greatly reducing the need for partial block updates (and related write amplification) and garbage collection.overload and get rid of 1 GB of DRAM for each terabyte of flash memory required.
ZNS code is already used on hyperscale sites and will be available with Linux and will be a component of the next primary NVMe specification that will come out next year.
NVMe has largely replaced THE SATA on high-performance systems and laptops.With data-centric nature of today’s workloads, anything that reduces latency, pricing, and overhead is smart.
ZNS doesn’t make sense on laptops, however, our cloud infrastructures will serve us faster and more cost-effectively.
Comments welcome.
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