In the News

Dr. J Metz, AMD, confirmed as chair of board

At a recent Storage Field Day (SFD26), there was a presentation on DNA storage, a new SNIA Technology Affiliate. The talk was on how far DNA storage has come and is capable of easily storing GB of data.

by Jim Jones

Gestalt IT Storage Field Day delegate, Jim Jones, highlights key takeaways on the state of the industry from SNIA Storage Developer Conference (SDC) 2023.

Enterprise Storage Forum (with help from SNIA) defines and provides an overview of Data Storage Security and how it fits in with data protection and DevSecOps, and looks at storage security vulnerabilities and key drivers in the data storage security field.

SNIA and the SCSI Trade Association (STA)announced the formation of a SNIA SCSI Trade Association Forum (STA Forum). This is a technology community within SNIA to promote the use and understanding of SCSI and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology.

New SNIA SCSI Trade Association Forum (STA Forum) - The STA Forum will drive innovation and progress by increasing collaboration, standardization, education and marketing outreach.

SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative (SMI) has announced the public release of SNIA Swordfish v1.2.5. 

This SCSI Trade Association panel session looks at storage trends for 2023.

by Tim Stammers
While computational storage (CS) is currently in the 'trough of disillusionment,' that doesn't mean the technology is doomed. Learn the benefits of CS and what's keeping it from taking off. CS became a very hot topic in IT infrastructure in 2019, soon after SNIA formed a technical working group dedicated to creating CS standards. Given that SNIA is the pre-eminent industry body for data storage vendors, this event was significant.

“SNIA welcomes the expansion of the DNA Data Storage Alliance board with the addition of Quantum and CATALOG. We are excited to see the Alliance expanding its membership and continuing to support the emergence of this important technology,” said Dr. J Metz, chair, SNIA board of directors. “With their talent and experience, David, Turguy, and Don will be excellent additions to the board. They’ll help guide this nascent industry through the next phase, address the inevitable challenges, and eventually reach a broader consumer base for these innovative technologies.“

SNIA is announcing a new way for memory to be utilized in devices. The Smart Data Accelerator Interface or SDXI, is designed to help optimize memory-to-memory data movers. If this sounds like next-gen Direct Memory Access to you then you'd be right! The goal is to help SNIA members build more integrations with CXL as well as building on the disaggregated computing research that has been going on. Stephen, what is SNIA hoping to accomplish with this new standard?

Daniel Chadash sits on the board of the DNA Storage Alliance, a SNIA technology affiliate, which is helping to address the growing demand for archival storage by using DNA as a storage medium. He explains where this type of storage is likely to be adopted: “The first users that will benefit from it will probably be in the digital preservation industries, M&E, healthcare, and advanced scientific research that needs to preserve data for decades, if not forever.“

Capacity, cost, and performance. Three of your top data storage priorities? No wonder, and it’s the same for many. The volume of data we produce is in overdrive, we’re churning out a staggering 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day - and that impacts the size of your data centre, how far your budget will stretch, and how quickly data can be moved.  Daniel Chadash sits on the board of the DNA Storage Alliance, a SNIA technology affiliate, comments “The first users that will benefit from it will probably be in the digital preservation industries, M&E, healthcare, and advanced scientific research that needs to preserve data for decades, if not forever.“

By Gary Hilson

SNIA developed the SDXI standard to provide an architectural interface to address current DMA limitations, SNIA TWG Chair Shyam Iyer said during an online briefing of the SDXI Platform Data Mover. Aside from overcoming the existing constraints of a DMA, SDXI will support heterogenous computing in parallel with CXL, which is now in its third iteration.