Optimizing Linux with cheap flash drives

Posted Mar 6, 2011 12:12 UTC (Sun) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
Parent article: Optimizing Linux with cheap flash drives

http://blog.datalight.com/why-raw-nand-flash-with-hardwar...

Optimizing Linux with cheap flash drives

Posted Mar 6, 2011 18:06 UTC (Sun) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

All true but, until someone defines a workable API/ABI/software interface, it's never going to happen.

Consider the esoteric optimization features that he mentions... If the engineers writing the low-level API didn't anticipate multiplane access then unmanaged will still be slower than managed.

Is anyone out there actually trying to write a high-performance, low-level Flash API that's intended to displace SSD controllers?

Optimizing Linux with cheap flash drives

Posted Apr 20, 2011 13:47 UTC (Wed) by Thom (guest, #73471) [Link]

By interface, do you mean a generic read and write that can handle the vagaries of all sorts of flash parts? Or do you mean a driver to handle the flash properly?

Datalight's solution is the latter. By working with Flash vendors and creating custom Flash Interface Modules, our Flash Management software utilizes the optimizations of each flash part. This blog post calls for what ONFI specified as EZ-NAND, and the Datalight solution supports those modules also. A fully supported on-die ECC of chips like ClearNAND, plus Wear Leveling and Bad Block Management, both visible and customizable, is truly the best of both worlds.

In order to displace an SSD controller, much more than throughput and endurance have to be considered - for example, hardware compression, or aggressive caching. With the right file system support, JEDEC's eMMC might be the best opponent for an SSD.