This week members from the SanDisk FlashSoft team are at the Intel Developer Forum, along with other members of the SanDisk Enterprise Storage Solutions group. The hardware team has been doing innovative work with NVMe, and is demonstrating the potential for NVMe flash devices with a very cool prototype.

But you might be asking, what’s that got to do with the FlashSoft software?

In the rapidly evolving world of server-tier caching solutions, many early innovations coupled the caching software to a specific flash hardware device or standard. The FlashSoft product design explicitly avoided doing this, because our engineering team knew that enterprise flash technology was developing quickly, with new physical architectures like eMLC and new interface standards like NVMe. Thinking about the future potential of our technology, we chose a completely hardware-neutral software design that would require minimal system overhead.

From the first FlashSoft software release two years ago, to our most recently announced release for VMware vSphere®, one thing that has never changed is the message that FlashSoft software can use any enterprise flash device – SATA, SAS or PCIe – from any vendor – as a cache in the server. In fact, we recently announced our business collaboration with Virident to underscore that message for our mutual customers.

One thing is changing now. Instead of just saying “SATA, SAS, or PCIe”, we’ll be adding NVMe to the interfaces for which we validate our software.

If your server-tier caching technology is anchored to a specific vendor’s flash hardware, controller, or interface, you might want to ask about NVMe. It’s not the only future development that might affect your caching roadmap, but it is one of the most important.

And if you’re at IDF this week, stop by and meet the SanDisk team – hardware and software. Because both sides of our team have a lot to share with you about NVMe.

Rich

We’re looking forward to the Intel Developer Forum this week in San Francisco. Joined by 13 other leading storage solutions companies, including Dell, EMC, Intel and NetApp, we’ll have live demonstrations of NVM Express technology in our kiosk (#444) in the NVM Express Showcase.

NVMe (non-volatile memory express) is an optimized, high performance, scalable host controller interface designed for enterprise and client PCIe SSDs. As an alternative to traditional storage interfaces that were created to support the requirements of spinning magnetic media, new solid state storage interfaces like NVMe fully leverage the low latency benefits of NAND flash media to significantly boost storage performance.

The NVM Express technology demonstration uses a SanDisk-developed controller based on our proprietary IP, and implements native PCIe transport. It supports the NVM Express protocol, and extends the SanDisk enterprise SSD architecture that delivers fast, predictable performance and superior reliability.

At SanDisk, we are committed to delivering leading edge solutions that bring the performance and efficiency benefits of flash-based storage to the enterprise, and are excited to demonstrate this innovative new technology.

If you want to check out the live demos, come by and see me in the SanDisk kiosk within the NVMe Community area, located within the Technology Showcase at IDF 2012 at Moscone West.

Mike

SanDisk believes that high performance interfaces are key to delivering the full performance potential of PCIe-based SSDs. Dave Landsman, SanDisk senior staff standardization engineer, shared his thoughts on NVMe-based solutions.

Click here to read Dave’s post on the NVM Express blog.

Greg

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-iOL) formed Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) Consortium to broaden industry support and cooperation for the adoption of PCIe SSDs. As an industry leader in both enterprise and consumer-based SSDs, SanDisk is among the founding members.

The Consortium will focus on using NVMe as the protocol interface for PCIe flash-based SSDs, allowing members to test interoperability and conformity to industry standards in a vendor neutral location.

SanDisk’s participation in this collaborative testing model not only helps drive innovation in demanding enterprise storage environments, but underscores our commitment to be an end-to-end resource for IT managers and OEM system developers.

The full press release is available here for your reference.

Greg