Abstract
Solid-state drives (SSDs) that do not have internal dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) are being widely spread for client SSD and embedded SSD markets in recent years because they are cheap and consume less power. Obviously, their performance is lower than conventional SSDs because they cannot exploit advantages of DRAM in the controller. However, this problem can be alleviated by using host memory buffer (HMB) feature of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), which allows SSDs to utilize the DRAM of host. In this paper, we show that commercial DRAM-less SSDs clearly exhibit worse I/O performance than SSDs with internal DRAM, but this can be improved by using the HMB feature. We also present methods that reveal how the host memory buffer is used in commercial DRAM-less SSDs to improve I/O performance. Through extensive experiments, we conclude that DRAM-less SSDs evaluated in this study mainly exploit the host memory buffer as an address mapping table cache rather than a read cache or write buffer to improve I/O performance.
Highlights
For the last decade, almost solid-state drives (SSDs) have included dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in their controller to improve input/output (I/O) performance and endurance
We studied the effects and roles of the host memory buffer (HMB) in commercial DRAM-less SSDs that support the HMB feature
We first experimentally showed that commercial DRAM-less SSDs have worse I/O performance than SSDs with internal DRAM, but they can improve it when using the HMB feature of Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe)
Summary
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have