Enabling Fast Decision Criteria in NVMe SSDs through NVMe-based Switch

摘要

Background: Solid-state drives (SSDs) have increased throughput and bandwidth drastically with the introduction of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol, profiting from the state-of-the-art Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) interface. Moreover, SSDs are perceived by the host as a black-box where they simply service the write and read requests. This inhibits the host to acknowledge the device's internal architecture. Additionally, the SSD does not distinguish between data and metadata requests. Thus, the host still lacks opportunities to get the best performance from SSDs due to the data semantic gap. Materials and Methods: This paper proposes a hardware solution to enable fast decision criteria in NVMe SSDs. Our proposed model is flexible enough to be configured for specific workloads by the host. The solution enables switching decisions to be transferred into the hardware, minimizing CPU usage. Conclusion: The data semantic gap is shortened in the hardware level, consequently reducing the write requests to flash and widening the life-span of the device.