SDC2020: Unlocking the Potential of Flash with the New Open Source Software-Enabled Flash™ API

Hyperscale applications are constantly redefining storage requirements for greater efficiency at cloud scale. Flash as a digital media opens new opportunities to the hyperscale architects and developers for fine-grained control over performance, latency, guaranteed quality of service, and the ability to define data placement and isolation of workloads from the host or the application.

KIOXIA (formerly Toshiba Memory) has released technology to the open source community that redefines digital storage, combining software flexibility with purpose-built hardware into a new flash native API that maximizes the value of flash memory for cloud providers. This combination of technologies fundamentally redefines the relationship between the host and solid-state storage devices and bypasses legacy storage paradigms, unlocks host control and enables the use of flash natively at maximum speed. What this means for cloud developers, storage architects and innovators is a new set of tools is available for defining and deploying flash rapidly and efficiently. The API abstracts the low level media management, presenting a higher-level, application centric view of flash with code compatibility across different flash technologies, vendors, and generations.

This means shortening of development times for new services, reuse of code and rapid time to market for each new generation of flash. KIOXIA will present this new flash-native technology, Software-Enabled Flash™, and show how it provides an open source framework for developers to solve storage challenges at hyperscale.

Learning Objectives
Introduce Software Enabled Flash for hyperscale developers and architects.
Understand the QoS, latency, data placement, and other benefits of Software Enabled Flash.
Learn about the open nature of the API and how to get involved.

Presented by
Eric Ries, SVP Memory and Storage Strategy Division, KIOXIA America Inc., KIOXIA America, Inc.