Advanced Topics in Programming Languages and Systems
Schedule 2021
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21/March/2021 - The brave new world of storage processors
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Speaker: Edward Bortnikov
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Affiliation: Pliops
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Abstract:
Storage processors are a new type of acceleration device that offloads centerpiece storage stack functions from legacy software to high-performance hardware. The legacy software paradigms waste flash capacity and performance, pushing the users to deploy expensive and overprovisioned SSDs. For example, the high write amplification induced by inefficient software limits the applicability of the next-generation low-cost flash technologies like QLC and PLC, as well as ZNS SSDs. Storage processors are purpose-built to exploit flash devices wisely and deliver premium performance at a reduced cost. Last but not least, they relieve the CPU from storage-specific processing, enabling higher utilization by customer applications.
In this talk, we present Pliops Storage Processor (PSP)—a novel accelerator device that decisively improves flash storage performance for a variety of applications and workloads. PSP capitalizes on groundbreaking hardware supported on-flash key-value (KV) store technology, and features accelerator engines for sorting, compression, data protection, and more. PSP provides a standard block device interface, hence the data applications are accelerated transparently, with no need for code changes. For advanced applications, PSP also provides a high-performance KV API which enables SSDs to closely match in-memory performance. We demonstrate the PSP performance advantages for a broad range of applications—block I/O, SQL and NoSQL databases.
