Solid-state storage devices and the block layer [LWN.net]

Solid-state storage devices and the block layer

Posted Oct 8, 2010 23:48 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Solid-state storage devices and the block layer by marcH
Parent article: Solid-state storage devices and the block layer

Probably the main reason why such an unfortunate IOPS jump has been forced in networking is backward compatibility.
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In comparison, the need for backward compatibility in storage is basically inexistent.

Well, the the whole reason SSDs exist is backward compatibility with rotating media, and it does slow things down considerably. If not for backward compatibility, we wouldn't use SCSI or even Linux block devices to access solid state storage. Write amplification by read-modify-write wouldn't be a problem if the device weren't trying to emulate a 512-byte-sectored disk drive.

Existence of SSDs tells me people aren't willing to replace the entire system at once -- they want to replace just the disk drives.

Not knowing the network issues, though, I can believe that backward compatibilty hinders performance less in storage than for ethernet.

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