Dual-Mode SSD Architecture for Next-Generation Hyperscale Data Centers: A Software/Hardware Co-Optimization Approach

Increasing proliferation of Artificial Intelligence, E-commerce, Big Data and Cloud applications is leading to highly diversified workloads and use cases in hyperscale data centers, which poses new challenges to solid state storage in terms of performance, flexibility and TCO optimizations. Moreover, there are increasing demands for software/hardware co-optimization and more control over I/O path from applications. Standard SSDs that are tuned for a few generic workloads cannot meet these challenges, resulting in suboptimal performance and TCO.

We present our Dual-Mode SSD Architecture, a new storage architecture designed for our next-generation hyperscale data centers. We define our Open Channel SSD specification and build a Dual-Mode SSD platform that supports both Open Channel mode and standard NVMe mode. We develop our Open Channel software stack in full user space as well as in kernel space. Working seamlessly with our storage engine software, we build customized FTL solutions for different business applications. Our software/hardware co-optimization solutions is leading to significant benefits in performance, Quality-of-Service and TCO.

Learning Objectives:
1. Challenges to solid storage systems in next-generation hyperscale data centers
2. Dual-Mode SSD architecture
3. Full user space Open Channel software stack, and software/hardware co-optimization solutions