Open Standards Featured at FMS 2023

SNIA welcomes colleagues to join them at the upcoming Flash Memory Summit, August 8-10, 2023 in Santa Clara CA.

SNIA is pleased to join standards organizations CXL Consortium™ (CXL™), PCI-SIG®, and Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express™ (UCIe™) in an Open Standards Pavilion, Booth #725, in the Exhibit Hall.  CMSI will feature SNIA member companies in a computational storage cross industry demo by Intel, MINIO, and Solidigm and a Data Filtering demo by ScaleFlux; a software memory tiering demo by VMware; a persistent memory workshop and hackathon; and the latest on SSD form factors E1 and E3 work by SNIA SFF TA Technical work group. SMI will showcase SNIA Swordfish® management of NVMe SSDs on Linux with demos by Intel Samsung and Solidigm.

CXL will discuss their advances in coherent connectivity.  PCI-SIG will feature their PCIe 5.0 architecture (32GT/s) and PCIe 6.0 (65GT/s) architectures and industry adoption and the upcoming PCIe 7.0 specification development (128GT/s).  UCIe will discuss their new open industry standard establishing a universal interconnect at the package-level.

SNIA STA Forum will also be in Booth #849 – learn more about the SCSI Trade Association joining SNIA.

These demonstrations and discussions will augment FMS program sessions in the SNIA-sponsored System Architecture Track on memory, computational storage, CXL, and UCIe standards.  A SNIA mainstage session on Wednesday August 9 at 2:10 pm will discuss Trends in Storage and Data: New Directions for Industry Standards.

SNIA colleagues and friends can receive a $100 discount off the 1-, 2-, or 3-day full conference registration by using code SNIA23.

Visit snia.org/fms to learn more about the exciting activities at FMS 2023 and join us there!

50 Speakers Featured at the 2023 SNIA Compute+Memory+Storage Summit

SNIA’s Compute+Memory+Storage Summit is where architectures, solutions, and community come together. Our 2023 Summit – taking place virtually on April 11-12, 2023 – is the best example to date, featuring a stellar lineup of 50 speakers in 40 sessions covering topics including computational storage real-world applications, the future of memory, critical storage security issues, and the latest on SSD form factors, CXL™, and UCIe™.

“We’re excited to welcome executives, architects, developers, implementers, and users to our 11th annual Summit,” said David McIntyre, C+M+S Summit Co-Chair, and member of the SNIA Board of Directors.  “We’ve gathered the technology leaders to bring us the latest developments in compute, memory, storage, and security in our free online event.  We hope you will watch live to ask questions of our experts as they present, and check out those sessions you miss on-demand.”

Memory sessions begin with Watch Out – Memory’s Changing! where Jim Handy and Tom Coughlin will discuss the memory technologies vying for the designer’s attention, with CXL™ and UCIe™ poised to completely change the rules. Speakers will also cover thinking memory, optimizing memory using simulations, providing capacity and TCO to applications using software memory tiering, and fabric attached memory.

Compute sessions include Steven Yuan of StorageX discussing the Efficiency of Data Centric Computing, and presentations on the computational storage and compute market, big-disk computational storage arrays for data analytics, NVMe as a cloud interface, improving storage systems for simulation science with computational storage, and updates on SNIA and NVM Express work on computational storage standards.

CXL and UCIe will be featured with presentations on CXL 3.0 and Universal Compute Interface Express™ On-Package Innovation Slot for Compute, Memory, and Storage Applications.

The Summit will also dive into security with a introductory view of today’s storage security landscape and additional sessions on zero trust architecture, storage sanitization, encryption, and cyber recovery and resilience.

For 2023, the Summit is delighted to present three panels – one on Exploring the Compute Express Link™ (CXL™) Device Ecosystem and Usage Models moderated by Kurtis Bowman of the CXL Consortium, one on Persistent Memory Trends moderated by Dave Eggleston of Microchip, and one on Form Factor Updates, moderated by Cameron Brett of the SNIA SSD Special Interest Group.

We will also feature the popular SNIA Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. On Tuesday April 11 at 4:00 pm PDT/7:00 pm EDT, you can join to discuss the latest compute, memory, and storage developments, and on Wednesday April at 3:00 pm PDT/6:00 pm EDT, we’ll be talking about memory advances.

Learn more in our Summit preview video, check out the agenda, and register for free to access our Summit platform!

Join Us as We Return Live to FMS!

SNIA is pleased to be part of the Flash Memory Summit 2022 agenda August 1-4, 2022 at the Santa Clara CA Convention Center, with our volunteer leadership demonstrating solutions, chairing and speaking in sessions, and networking with FMS attendees at a variety of venues during the conference.

The ever-popular SNIA Reception at FMS features the SNIA groups Storage Management Initiative, Compute Memory and Storage Initiative, and Green Storage Initiative, along with SNIA alliance partners CXL Consortium, NVM Express, and OpenFabrics Alliance.  Stop by B-203/204 at the Convention Center from 5:30 – 7:00 pm Monday August 1 for refreshments and networking with colleagues to kick off the week!

You won’t want to miss SNIA’s mainstage presentation on Wednesday August 3 at 2:40 pm in the Mission City Ballroom. SNIA Vice Chair Richelle Ahlvers of Intel will provide a perspective on how new storage technologies and trends are accelerating through standards and open communities.

In the Exhibit Hall, SNIA Storage Management Initiative and Compute Memory and Storage Initiative are FMS Platinum sponsors with a SNIA Demonstration Pavilion at booth #725.  During exhibit hours Tuesday evening through Thursday afternoon, 15 SNIA member companies will be featured in live technology demonstrations on storage management, computational storage, persistent memory, sustainability, and form factors; a Persistent Memory Programming Workshop and Hackathon; and theater presentations on SNIA’s standards and alliance work. 

Long standing SNIA technology focus areas in computational storage and memory will be represented in the SNIA sponsored System Architectures Track (SARC for short) – Tuesday for memory and Thursday for computational storage.  SNIA is also pleased to sponsor a day on CXL architectures, memory, and storage talks on Wednesday. These sessions will all be in Ballroom G.

A new Sustainability Track on Thursday morning in Ballroom A led by the SNIA Green Storage Technical Work Group includes presentations on SSD power management, real world applications and storage workloads, and a carbon footprint comparison of SSDs vis HDDs, followed by a panel discussion. SSDs will also be featured in two SNIA-led presentation/panel pairs – SSDS-102-1 and 102-2 Ethernet SSDs on Tuesday afternoon in Ballroom B and SSDS-201-1 and 201-2 EDSFF E1 and E3 form factors on Wednesday morning in Ballroom D. SNIA Swordfish will be discussed in the DCTR-102-2 Enterprise Storage Part 2 session in Ballroom D on Tuesday morning

And the newest SNIA technical work group – DNA Data Storage– will lead a new-to-2022 FMS track on Thursday morning in Great America Meeting Room 2, discussing topics like preservation of DNA for information storage, the looming need for molecular storage, and DNA sequencing at scale. Attendees can engage for questions and discussion in Part 2 of the track.

Additional ways to network with SNIA colleagues include the always popular chat with the experts – beer and pizza on Tuesday evening, sessions on cloud storage, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and an FMS theater presentation on real world storage workloads.

Full details on session times, locations, chairs and speakers for all these exciting FMS activities can be found at www.snia.org/fms and on the Flash Memory Summit website.  SNIA colleagues and friends can register for $100.00 off the full conference or single day packages using the code SNIA22 at www.flashmemorysummit.com.

Answering Your Questions on EDSFF

We had a tremendous response to our webcast asking if we were truly at the end of the 2.5-inch disk era. SNIA Compute, Memory, and Storage Initiative SSD Special Interest Group brought together experts from Dell, Facebook, HPE, JEDEC, KIOXIA, Lenovo, and Microsoft in a lively follow on to the Enterprise and Data Center SSD Form Factor (EDSFF) May 2020 discussions at OCP Summit,. If you missed our live webcast – watch it on demand.

Webcast attendees raised a variety of questions.  Our experts provide answers to them here: Read More

Are We at the End of the 2.5-inch Disk Era?

The SNIA Solid State Storage Special Interest Group (SIG) recently updated the Solid State Drive Form Factor page to provide detailed information on dimensions; mechanical, electrical, and connector specifications; and protocols. On our August 4, 2020 SNIA webcast, we will take a detailed look at one of these form factors – Enterprise and Data Center SSD Form Factor (EDSFF) – challenging an expert panel to consider if we are at the end of the 2.5-in disk era.

Enterprise and Data Center Form Factor (EFSFF) is designed natively for data center NVMe SSDs to improve thermal, power, performance, and capacity scaling. EDSFF has different variants for flexible and scalable performance, dense storage configurations, general purpose servers, and improved data center TCO.  At the 2020 Open Compute Virtual Summit, OEMs, cloud service providers, hyperscale data center, and SSD vendors showcased products and their vision for how this new family of SSD form factors solves real data challenges.

Read More

How Many IOPS? Users Share Their 2017 Storage Performance Needs

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

Flash Memory Summit Highlights SNIA Innovations in Persistent Memory & Flash

SNIA and the Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) invite you to join them at Flash Memory Summit 2016, August 8-11 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. SNIA members and colleagues receive $100 off any conference package using the code “SNIA16” by August 4 when registering for Flash Memory Summit at fms boothhttp://www.flashmemorysummit.com

On Monday, August 8, from 1:00pm – 5:00pm, a SNIA Education Afternoon will be open to the public in SCCC Room 203/204, where attendees can learn about multiple storage-related topics with five SNIA Tutorials on flash storage, combined service infrastructures, VDBench, stored-data encryption, and Non-Volatile DIMM (NVDIMM) integration from SNIA member speakers. Read More

SNIA’s Persistent Memory Education To Be Featured at Open Server Summit 2016

sssi boothIf you are in Silicon Valley or the Bay Area this week, SNIA welcomes you to join them and the Solid State Storage Initiative April 13-14 at the Santa Clara Convention Center for Open Server Summit 2016, the industry’s premier event that focuses on the design of next- generation servers with topics on data center efficiency, SSDs, core OS, cloud server design, the future of open server and open storage, and other efforts toward combining industry-standard hardware with open-source software.

The SNIA NVDIMM Special Interest Group is featured at OSS 2016, and will host a panel Thursday April 14 on NVDIMM technology, moderated by Bill Gervasi of JEDEC and featuring SIG members Diablo Technology, Netlist, and SMART Modular. The panel will highlight the latest activities in the three “flavors” of NVDIMM , and offer a perspective on the future of persistent memory in systems. Also, SNIA board member Rob Peglar of Micron Technology will deliver a keynote on April 14, discussing how new persistent memory directions create new approaches for system architects and enable entirely new applications involving enormous data sets and real-time analysis.

SSSI will also be in booth 403 featuring demonstrations by the NVDIMM SIG, discussions on SSD data recovery and erase, and updates on solid state storage performance testing.  SNIA members and colleagues can register for $100 off using the code SNIA at http://www.openserversummit.com.

SNIA NVM Summit Delivers the Persistent Memory Knowledge You Need

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.

Upcoming December 11 Webcast: Flash Memory Enables 4K and Beyond Video Workflows

by Marty Foltyn

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held each year in early January in Las Vegas, has moved a long way from the days when you had to search high and low on the show floor for storage-related exhibits. Step on the floor in 2016, and you may never get past the automobile displays which have the capability to track and store your every activity. And even if you do, the plethora of accessible tech, video imaging, and smart home apps will make your head spin!

Solid State Storage is an important contributor to the internet of things featured at CES, and understanding it is key to making informed choices. Get ready for CES 2016 by first attending a SNIA Solid State Storage webcast on Friday, December 11 at 11:00 am Pacific where Tom Coughlin, CEO of analyst firm Coughlin Associates, presents Flash Memory Enables 4K and Beyond Video Workflows.

As the price and availability of flash memory grows flash memory will enable future generations of media that is even more immersive than today as video moves to 8K and virtual reality begins to play an increasing role in entertainment. Tom will discuss how, as the resolution and frame rate for video increase, flash memory is staring to play a significant role for content capture, post production and content delivery. His presentation will include material from the 2015 Digital Storage in Media and Entertainment Report from Coughlin Associates (and the associated 2015 digital media professional survey) on the growing use of flash memory in all aspects of professional media and entertainment and put flash use in context with other storage technologies in this industry.

The webcast is an important lead in to the CES partner program Storage Visions Conference January 3-4 in Las Vegas, where SNIA will exhibit  solid state and persistent memory and have a pre-conference education day.  Register for this informative SNIA Brighttalk webcast , held on December 11, 2015 at 11:00 apm Pacific/2:00 pm Eastern at https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/663/180197