NoLoad Filesystem: A Stacked Filesystem for NVMe-Based Computational Storage

Computational Storage is an emerging technology that aims to make computer systems more efficient by moving certain parts of applications closer to the storage layer. In compute tasks such as compression, encryption, error-detection, and error-correction the target application does not need to be made aware of any of the underlying details of the acceleration target. In these cases inserting the acceleration between the application and the operating system is an ideal solution as it removes the development effort required to integrate an acceleration into a new software. Stacked filesystems are a good candidate for inserting new compute elements between applications and storage devices. They allow transparent access from the applications perspective and full architecture flexibility for system administrators who can use existing filesystem and raid configurations. In this presentation we will demonstrate a stacked filesystem approach to data compression/decompression which allows for high-speed hardware acceleration as a transparent layer between application and storage devices. Using this approach, all status reporting and acceleration control is achieved through existing Linux filesystem APIs.

Learning Objectives

Learn about stacked filesystems and how they can be used with computational storage,Learn about NVMe based computational storage,Learn about transparent computation acceleration in filesystems