Join the SSSI at the Storage Visions Conference, January 6-7,2013 at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.  With a theme of Petabytes are the new Terabytes, the 2013 conference will explore the convergent needs of digital storage to support cloud content distribution and sharing, user- generated content capture and use, and professional media and entertainment applications.

The SSSI booth is #6 on the Exhibit floor, and will showcase a PCIe SSD display of drives from SSSI members BitMicro, Fusion-io, IDT, Marvell, Micron, STEC, and Virident, and a live demonstration by Fusion-io.  The latest information gathered by the WIOCP Project will be presented.  Featured SSSI member speakers at Storage Visions include Jim Handy of Objective Analysis, who will examine how new storage developments are driving new storage systems with panelists Jim Pappas of Intel, Paul Wassenberg of Marvell, Mike Fitzpatrick of Toshiba, Paul Luse of Intel, and Sumit Puri of LSI; and Jim Pappas of Intel, who will moderate a panel on new frontiers in storage software with SSSI member panelists Walt Hubis of Fusion-io, Doug Voigt of HP, and Bob Beauchamp of EMC.

Follow our activities on Twitter at

twitter.com/#!/sniasolidstate

The media buzz continues on solid state storage, now a prominent feature of storage, virtualization, and developer discussions.  Reaching the ears of business is SSSI’s Marketing Committee Chair Tom Coughlin, who has a blog on Forbes.  Latest posts discuss  a new age of digital storage interfaces, many based on the PCIe computer interface, that can take advantage of the higher data rates that NAND flash-based digital storage can provide.

Solid State Storage was featured at recent storage conferences including SNIA’s Storage Developer Conference and SNW (Storage Networking World) US and Europe.  At SNW US, Lucas Mearian of Computerworld and Jim Pappas, SNIA Board and SSSI member, discussed a sea change in the non-volatile memory (NVM) market over the next five years, with more dense and reliable technologies challenging dominant NAND flash memory now used in solid-state drives (SSD) and embedded in mobile products.  Mearian’s article is here.

At Powering the Cloud – SNW Europe, Randy Kerns of the SNIA member Evaluator Group led a spotlight session on Solid State Storage and Its Impact on the Environment, with presentations from SSSI members Kim Gardner of STEC and David Dale of NetApp.

SNIA and the Solid State Storage Initiative urge you to get involved in fast-developing SSSI activities in PCIe and NVM.  Visit our website at http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi or email asksssi@snia.org

SNIA is proud to participate at the Intel Developers Forum this week at Moscone West In San Francisco.  Our booth in the NVM Express Community area focuses on SNIA and SSSI work in non volatile memory.

Attendees are very interested in the newly launched SNIA NVM Programming Technical Work Group (NVMp TWG).

The purpose of the NVMp TWG is to create specifications which will provide guidance to operating system, device driver, and application developers to be able to accelerate the availability of hardware-enabling Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) software.  A concrete example is database software which can use NVM to assure the database is available quickly after a system reboot.

The TWG will develop two specifications. The first is for NVM Extensions between OS Components. The work on a first version is starting now with an expected completion of about Q4’12.  The second specification is for NVM Application Extensions; with the first version expected Q2’13.

The Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) will  provide marketing and outreach support to the NVMp TWG, extending its educational mission.

The NVMp TWG is supported by EMC, Fusion-io, HP, Intel (also chairs the TWG), LSI, NetApp, Oracle, Samsung, SanDisk, Seagate, Symantec, Toshiba, Virident, and VMware.  More companies are in the process of joining SNIA and the SSSI.

If you are interested in the NVMp TWG, and/or want more information on SSSI activities  visit www.snia.org/forums/sssi

SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) enjoyed a lively following at the recent Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara CA.

PCIe SSD was a favorite topic.  A Tuesday Chat with the Experts found SSSI members Eden Kim (PCIe Flash), Paul Wassenberg (SATA Express), and Jim Pappas (Solid State Storage Standards) speaking to full tables.  A SSSI-sponsored PCIe SSD panel on Thursday moderated by Eden Kim of Calypso Systems included talks on PCIe performance testing, SATA Express, PCIe 2.5 form factor, SCSI Express, and PCIe and Storage Class Memory.  The SSSI booth was packed with individuals and companies eager to learn more about our PCIe SSD, NVM programming, and workload I/O capture program activities.

Solid state technology dominated sessions and the show floor.  SSSI Marketing Chair Tom Coughlin of Coughlin Associates gives his technology perspective of the show in his Storage Bytes blog for Forbes at http://blogs.forbes.com/tomcoughlin/.  Check it out and let us know your thoughts!

With opening day of the Del Mar races in my home town on Wednesday, it seems only fitting to note that the SSSI PCIe SSD taskforce is rounding the last turn in its informational call schedule.

If you have a stake in this fast growing technology area, you won’t want to miss the final two calls on July 16 and July 30 at 7:00 pm ET/4:00 PM PT.

The July 16 call will feature a talk by Narinder Lall of eASIC on PCIe Controllers and a presentation by Walt Hubis of the SNIA Security Technical Work Group on Security and Removable NVRAM PCIe Storage.

Join the teleconference at 1-866-439-4480 passcode 25478081# and the webex at snia.webex.com meeting id 797-289-257 passcode pcie2012.

Finally, if you’ve missed any calls to this point, catch up by visiting http://snia.org/forums/sssi/pcie.

See you at the races!

SSSI’s PCIe SSD Task Force has covered a lot of ground since the inaugural call April 9.  Sixty-five organizations are now participating with 125 members on the email reflector.  The first four calls identified issues, with speakers from the SSSI, Agilent, Calypso, HP, LeCroy, Marvell, Micron, Seagate, Stec, Toshiba, and Virident taking a closer look at standards; discussing a PCIe test hardware RTP refresh; presenting results of a survey on how many IOPS are enough; discussing PCIe test methodology and system integration issues; presenting on 2.5” PCIe form factor; and reviewing SCSI Express, the PCI SIG, and PCIe system and form factor concerns.   All call notes are at http://snia.org/forums/sssi/pcie.

The open meeting roadmap now ramps with calls on the following topics – Big Picture – What Does It All Mean? (June 4); Deployment Strategies/Market Development (June 18); Where Do We Go From Here? (July 2); and Roadmaps and Milestones 2012 (July 16).  All SSSI members are invited to attend – calls are 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm PT and details are at http://snia.org/forums/sssi/pcie.

PCIe SSD Task Force activities will culminate in a PCIe Task Force Face-to-Face Meeting August 20 from 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara CA (www.flashmemorysummit.com). Contact SSSI at pciechair@snia.org if you would like to attend.

Membership is complimentary in the PCIe SSD Task Force and all current SSSI members are welcome to participate.   After July, the Task Force will change format to a SSSI Committee and companies not already SSSI members will need to join the SNIA and SSSI to participate. For additional information, or to join, please contact the PCIe Taskforce Chair at pciechair@snia.org.

You have have seen articles about the study by a UCSD researcher that says future of Flash (and NAND Flash-based SSDs)  is bleak: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/021612-ssds-have-a-bleak-future-256255.html?source=NWWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2012-02-20

Well, SSSI member Allyn Malventano of PC Perspectives begs to differ: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/NAND-Flash-Memory-Future-Not-So-Bleak-After-All