Kioxia API for Software-Enabled Flash Technology Available on GitHub

Hyperscale and cloud applications are redefining the way the world works, plays and communicates – and their architects and developers just got a big helping hand.

Kioxia America, Inc. (formerly Toshiba Memory America, Inc.), announced that an API for its software-enabled flash technology is available on GitHub.

This technology combines software flexibility, host control and flash native semantics to make flash easier to manage, more timely to deploy and more predictable in nature.

First announced at the 2020 Open Compute Summit in April, the software-enabled flash technology removes the barriers associated with legacy HDD-based technologies to deliver a way to maximize the potential of flash. By fundamentally changing the relationship between solid state storage and the host in cloud environments, software-enabled flash technology frees developers from narrowly defined ‘drive’ behavior, which presents challenges for applications requiring control over workload isolation, data placement, and QoS. Using the API spec, hyperscale flash storage developers realize the full speed and capability of flash with the ease of software definability.

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Additionally, the software enables architects to maximize the benefits of their investments in solid state storage, including the ability to freely and flexibly define storage behaviors between the host and the flash. This leads to benefits such as latency management and user-definable performance, as well as optimized flash health and endurance. The API abstracts differences, eliminating the need for developers to modify code with each new version of flash memory – thereby reducing development efforts and enabling the deployment of new gens of flash memory.

“It is in the spirit of innovation and collaboration that we move forward with releasing the Software-Enabled flash API for access and review,” noted Eric Ries, SVP, memory storage strategy division (MSSD). “We want the cloud computing and storage development community to benefit from all that this new technology has to offer. It opens the door for hyperscale storage developers to unleash the potential of flash in their unique environments in a way that just isn’t possible with traditional storage methodologies.“

Software-enabled flash hardware is compliant with PCIe standards, enabling a large ecosystem and accelerating open innovation across multiple products.

The API spec is available on the company GitHub site.

Resource: 
Video: Kioxia Software-Enabled Flash Technology – Advanced Data Placement and Workload Isolation

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