SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative Project

The Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced a project to educate users on how to use the recently published Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification (SSS PTS) to compare the performance of Solid State Drives (SSDs).

The public can now visit a webpage, which shows SSS PTS-compliant performance data from actual enterprise and client SSDs and advice on how to interpret the results of the individual tests. The webpage will also provide a venue for SSD manufacturers to post SSS PTS compliant test results for their products.

In support of the project, members of the SNIA Solid State Storage Technical Work Group – the team that created the SSS PTS – collaborated on an accompanying white paper entitled Understanding SSD Performance Using the SNIA SSS Performance Test Specification.

"The white paper and website provide a way for readers to get an overall understanding of solid state drive performance by evaluating all of the PTS tests in a summary fashion," said Eden Kim, chair of the SSS Technical Work Group and CEO of Calypso Systems. "Taken together, the various PTS SSD tests allow the reader to more precisely understand the innate performance of SSDs at the device level while choosing test parameters that are similar to the user’s workload of interest."

"The Understanding SSD Performance project is intended to give users sufficient information to make intelligent decisions about SSD performance," said Paul Wassenberg, chair of the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative. "SSSI intends to establish an industry-wide database of performance results, and encourages SSD manufacturers to contribute SSS PTS results for their products."

The SSSI will exhibit at the Storage Visions Conference on January 8-9, 2012 at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. Also on display will be examples of SSD products from SSSI members Fusion-io, Micron, Smart Modular, and Violin Memory showing the variety of SSD form factors available today.

"The 2012 Storage Visions Conference is glad to have the SNIA SSSI participate and showcase the progress they have made in their PTS project," said Tom Coughlin, Storage Visions Organizer and Program Chairman. "The Understanding SSD Performance project is a crucial step in enabling the performance test methods defined within the SSS PTS to be more broadly used by industry vendors and systems designers."