Key-value FTL over open channel SSD

Abstract

The wide adoption of key-value (KV) data structures (such as in Apache Cassandra[1], Redis[2], RocksDB[3]) along with the ongoing efforts to support KV commands in the NVMe standard, motivates the development of KV at the drive level. The abstract discusses a development of a KV FTL (Flash Translation Layer) over Open Channel SSD that includes smart techniques for managing huge number of variable size objects with relatively low DDR footprint. The implementation is based on hardware and shows much higher throughput, improved latency, significant reduction in CPU load and high scalability compared to RocksDB, which is one of the most popular KV stores.