Registration is now open for the upcoming Persistent Programming in Real Life (PIRL) Conference – July 22-23, 2019 on the campus of the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
The 2019 PIRL event features a collaboration between UCSD Computer Science and Engineering, the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory, and the SNIA to bring industry leaders in programming and developing persistent memory applications together for a two-day discussion on their experiences.
Read MoreVideo streaming is an easy-to-understand workload from the I/O perspective, right? It’s pretty obvious that it’s a workload heavy on long, streaming reads. The application can be modeled with a consistent read flow, and the software tests should be easy. However, an analysis of the real-world workload shows something very different. At the disk level, the reads turn out to be a rapid flow of 4k and 8k block reads from a solid-state-disk. Further, other processes on the system also add in a small amount of 4k and 8k writes in the midst of the reads. All of this impacts the application –and an SSD — which was likely heavily tested on the basis of long, streaming reads.
Understanding the real-world characteristics of a workload can be a significant advantage in the development of new hardware, new systems, and new applications. 
The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) and SSSI member company Calypso Systems are providing an opportunity to build a repository of workloads for the industry to use for real-world testing, as outlined in a new SSSI white paper How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution. This paper is also available in Chinese at the SSSI Knowledge Center White Papers page.
By going to the TestMyWorkload site, anyone can participate by providing a trace capture of an I/O workload that can be used by others to develop better products. The capture itself traces the block transfers, but does not capture actual data. Any workload replay would use representative blocks, so there are no concerns about data security or integrity from these captures.
The repository can be used by any participant to test hardware and software, and can help system vendors and users optimize configurations for the best performance based on real-world data. By participating in this effort, organizations and individuals can provide insight and gain from the knowledge of all the contributors.
Follow these three steps to be a part of the revolution today!
1. Read the white paper.
2. Download the free capture tools at TestMyWorkload.com.
3. Mark your calendar and register HERE to learn more in the free SNIA webcast How to Be a Part of the Real-World Workload Revolution on July 9 at 11:00 am Pacific/2:00 pm Eastern.
It’s exciting to see the recent formation of the Solid State Drive Special Interest Group (SIG) here in the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative. After all, everyone appreciates the ability to totally geek out about the latest drive technology and software for file systems. Right? Hey, where’s everyone going? We have vacation pictures with the dog we stored that we want to show…
Solid state storage has long found its place with those seeking greater performance in systems, especially where smaller or more random block/file transfers are prevalent. Single-system opportunity with NVMe drives is broad, and pretty much unquestioned by those building systems for the modern IT environments. Cloud, likewise, has found use of the technology where single-node performance makes a broader deployment relevant.
There have been many efforts to build the case for solid state in networked storage. Where storage and computation combine — for instance in a large map/reduce application — there’s been significant advantage, especially in the area of sustained data reads. This has usually comes at a scalar cost, where additional systems are needed for capacity. Nonetheless, finding cases where non-volatile memory enhances infrastructure deployment for storage or analytics. Yes, analytics is infrastructure these days, deal with it.
Seemingly independent of the hardware trends, the development of new file systems has provided significant innovation. Notably, heavily parallel file systems have the ability to serve a variety of network users in specialized applications or appliances. Much of the work has focused on development of the software or base technology rather than delivering a broader view of either performance or applicability. Therefore, a paper such as this one on building a Lustre file system using NVMe drives is a welcome addition to the case for both solid state storage and revolutionary file systems that move from specific applications to more general availability.
The paper shows how to build a small (half-rack) cluster of storage to support the Lustre file system, and it also adds the Dell VFlex OS implemented as a software defined storage solution. This has the potential to take an HPC-focused product like Lustre and drive a broader market availability for a high-performance solution. The combination of read/write performance, easy adoption to the broad enterprise, and relatively small footprint shows new promise for innovation.
The opportunity for widespread delivery of solid state storage using NVMe and software innovation in the storage space is ready to move the datacenter to new and more ambitious levels. The SNIA 2019 Storage Developer Conference is currently open for submissions from storage professionals willing to share knowledge and experience. Innovative solutions such as this one are always welcome for consideration.
Leave it to Rob Peglar, SNIA Board Member and the MC of SNIA’s 7th annual Persistent Memory Summit to capture the Summit day as persistently fun with a metric boatload of great presentations and speakers! And indeed it was a great day, with fourteen sessions presented by 23 speakers covering the breadth of where PM is in 2019 – real world, application-focused, and supported by multiple operating systems. Find a great recap on the Forbes blog by Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates.
Attendees enjoyed live demos of Persistent Memory technologies from AgigA Tech, Intel, 
SMART Modular, the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative, and Xilinx. Learn more about what they presented here.
And for the first time as a part of the Persistent Memory Summit, SNIA hosted a Persistent Memory Programming Hackathon sponsored by Google Cloud, where SNIA PM experts 
mentored software developers to do live coding to understand the various tiers and modes of PM and what existing methods are available to access them. Upcoming SNIA SSSI on Solid State Storage blogs will give details and insights into “PM Hacking”. Also sign up for the SNIAMatters monthly newsletter to learn more, and stay tuned for upcoming Hackathons – next one is March 10-11 in San Diego.
Missed out on the live sessions? Not to worry, each session was videotaped and can be found on the SNIA Youtube Channel. Download the slides for each session on the PM Summit agenda at www.snia.org/pm-summit. Thanks to our presenters from Advanced Computation and Storage, Arm, Avalanche Technology, Calypso Systems, Coughlin Associates, Dell, Everspin Technologies, In-Cog Solutions, Intel, Mellanox Technologies, MemVerge, Microsoft, Objective Analysis, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation, Tencent Cloud, Western Digital, and Xilinx. And thanks also to our great audience and their questions – your enthusiasm and support will keep us persistently having even more fun!
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. Read More
New on the Solid State Storage website is a whitepaper from analysts Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates and Jim Handy of Objective Analysis which details what IT manager requirements are for storage performance.The paper examines how requirements have changed over a four-year period for a range of applications, including databases, online transaction processing, cloud and storage services, and scientific and engineering computing. Users disclose how many IOPS are needed, how much storage capacity is required, and what system bottlenecks prevent them for getting the performance they need. Read More
It’s an easy “Yes” vote for this great webcast from the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative on the Magic and Mystery of In-Memory Apps! Join us on Election Day – November 8 – at 1:00 pm ET/10:00 am PT to learn about today’s market and the disruptions that happen when combining big-data 
(Petabytes) with in-memory/real-time requirements. You’ll understand the interactions with Hadoop/Spark, Tachyon, SAP HANA, NoSQL, and the related infrastructure of DRAM, NAND, 3DXpoint, NV-DIMMs, and high-speed networking and learn what happens to infrastructure design and operations when “tiered-memory” replaces “tiered storage”.
Presenter Shaun Walsh of G2M Communications is an expert in memory technology – and a great speaker! He’ll share with you what you need to know about evaluating, planning, and implementing in-memory computing applications, and give you the framework to evaluation and plan for your adoption of in-memory computing.
Register at: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/663/230103
by Marty Foltyn
The discussion, use, and application of Non-volatile Memory (NVM) has come a long way from the first SNIA NVM Summit in 2013. The significant improvements in persistent memory, with enormous capacity, memory-like speed and non-volatility, will make the long-awaited promise of the convergence storage and memory a reality. In this 4th annual NVM Summit, we will see how Storage and Memory have now converged, and learn that we are now faced with developing the needed ecosystem. Register and join colleagues on Wednesday, January 20, 2016 in San Jose, CA to learn more, or follow http://www.snia.org/nvmsummit to review presentations post- event.
The Summit day begins with Rick Coulson, Senior Fellow, Intel, discussing the most recent developments in persistent memory with a presentation on All the Ways 3D XPoint Impacts Systems Architecture.
Ethan Miller, Professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Cruz, will discuss Rethinking Benchmarks for Non-Volatile Memory Storage Systems. He will describe the challenges for benchmarks posed by the transition to NVM, and propose potential solutions to these challenges.
Ken Gibson, NVM SW Architecture, Intel will present Memory is the New Storage: How Next Generation NVM DIMMs will Enable New Solutions That Use Memory as the High-Performance Storage Tier . This talk reviews some of the decades-old assumptions that change for suppliers of storage and data services as solutions move to memory as the new storage
Jim Handy, General Director, Objective Analysis, and Tom Coughlin, President, Coughlin Associates will discuss Future Memories and Today’s Opportunities, exploring the role of NVM in today’s and future applications. They will give some market analysis and projections for the various NVM technologies in use today.
Matt Bryson, SVP-Research, ABR, will lead a panel on NVM Futures-Emerging Embedded Memory Technologies, exploring the current status and future opportunities for NVM technologies and in particular both embedded and standalone MRAM technologies and associated applications.
Edward Sharp, Chief, Strategy and Technology, PMC-Sierra, will present Changes Coming to Architecture with NVM. Although the IT industry has made tremendous progress innovating up and down the computing stack to enable, and take advantage of, non-volatile memory, is it sufficient, and where are the weakest links to fully unlock the potential of NVM.
Don Jeanette, VP and John Chen, VP of Trendfocus will review the Solid State Storage Market, discuss what is happening in various segments, and why, as it relates to PCIe.
Dejan Vucinc, HGST San Jose Research Center will discuss Latency in Context: Finding Room for NVMs in the Existing Software Ecosystem. HGST Research has been working diligently to find out where is there room in the existing hardware/software ecosystem for emerging NVM technology when viewed as block storage rather than main memory. Vucinc will show an update on previously published results using prototype PCI Express-attached PCM SSDs and our custom device protocol, DC Express, as well as measurements of its latency and performance through a proper device driver using several different kinds of Linux kernel block layer architecture.
Arthur Sainio, Director Marketing, SMART Modular and Co-Chair, SNIA NVDIMM SIG, will lead a panel on NVDIMM. discussing how new media types are joining NAND Flash, and enhanced controllers and networking are being developed to unlock the latency and throughput advantages of NVDIMM.
Neal Christiansen, Principal Development Lead, Microsoft, Microsoft will discuss Storage Class Memory Support in the Windows OS. Storage Class Memories (SCM) have been the topic of R&D for the last few years and with the promise of near term product delivery, the question is how will Windows be enabled for such SCM products and how can applications take advantage of these capabilities.
Jeff Moyer, Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat will give an overview of the current state of Persistent Memory Support in the Linux Kernel.
Cristian Diaconu, Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft will present Microsoft SQL Hekaton – Towards Large Scale Use of PM for In-memory Databases, using the example of Hekaton (Sql Server in-memory database engine) to break down the opportunity areas for non-volatile memory in the database space.
Tom Talpey, Architect File Server Team, Microsoft, will discuss Microsoft Going Remote at Low Latency: A Future Networked NVM Ecosystem. As new ultra-low latency storage such as Persistent Memory and NVM is deployed, it becomes necessary to provide remote access – for replication, availability and resiliency to errors.
Kevin Deierling, VP Marketing, Mellanox will discuss the role of the network in developing Persistent Memory over Fabrics, and what are the key goals and key fabric features requirements.
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.
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.