Flash Memory Summit: Kioxia First Samples of Hardware Supporting Linux Foundation Software-Enabled Flash Community Project

Kioxia America, Inc. announced the 1st hardware samples that support the Linux Foundation’s vendor-neutral Software-Enabled Flash Community Project, which is making flash software-defined.

The company is expecting to deliver customer samples in August 2023. Built for the demanding needs of hyperscale environments, Software-Enabled Flash technology helps hyperscale cloud providers and storage developers maximize the value of flash memory. The hardware from Kioxia is the first step to putting this working technology in the hands of developers.

The first running units will be showcased in live demonstrations in the company’s booth at Flash Memory Summit 2023. This new class of drive consists of purpose-built, media-centric flash hardware focused on hyperscale requirements that work with an open source API and libraries to provide the needed functionality. By unlocking the power of flash, this technology breaks free from legacy HDD protocols and creates a platform specific to flash media in a hyperscale environment.

“The Software-Enabled Flash project allows the flash industry to shed the legacy HDD device paradigm,” said Eric Ries, senior VP, memory and storage strategy division, Kioxia America. “With this new collaboration across the developer and flash maker communities, flash can be customized for different storage requirements, and protocols can be changed with a simple driver change while keeping the same hardware in place.”

Hosted by the Linux Foundation, this open source, global collaboration project will allow broad adoption of – and advancements to – software-defined flash to benefit the storage developer community. Focused on flash cloud storage, the project was created to be vendor agnostic and flexible in order to meet the evolving requirements of the modern data center.

According to Mike Dolan, Linux Foundation: “The community is very active in data storage development, and this new project focusing on a software-defined API answers the serious need for a software-defined approach to flash storage in the cloud.”

The Linux Foundation’s Software-Enabled Flash Community Project offers several levels of membership and participation.