linux/Documentation/lightnvm/pblk.txt

pblk: Physical Block Device Target
==================================

pblk implements a fully associative, host-based FTL that exposes a traditional
block I/O interface. Its primary responsibilities are:

  - Map logical addresses onto physical addresses (4KB granularity) in a
    logical-to-physical (L2P) table.
  - Maintain the integrity and consistency of the L2P table as well as its
    recovery from normal tear down and power outage.
  - Deal with controller- and media-specific constrains.
  - Handle I/O errors.
  - Implement garbage collection.
  - Maintain consistency across the I/O stack during synchronization points.

For more information please refer to:

  http://lightnvm.io

which maintains updated FAQs, manual pages, technical documentation, tools,
contacts, etc.
lightnvm: physical block device (pblk) target This patch introduces pblk, a host-side translation layer for Open-Channel SSDs to expose them like block devices. The translation layer allows data placement decisions, and I/O scheduling to be managed by the host, enabling users to optimize the SSD for their specific workloads. An open-channel SSD has a set of LUNs (parallel units) and a collection of blocks. Each block can be read in any order, but writes must be sequential. Writes may also fail, and if a block requires it, must also be reset before new writes can be applied. To manage the constraints, pblk maintains a logical to physical address (L2P) table, write cache, garbage collection logic, recovery scheme, and logic to rate-limit user I/Os versus garbage collection I/Os. The L2P table is fully-associative and manages sectors at a 4KB granularity. Pblk stores the L2P table in two places, in the out-of-band area of the media and on the last page of a line. In the cause of a power failure, pblk will perform a scan to recover the L2P table. The user data is organized into lines. A line is data striped across blocks and LUNs. The lines enable the host to reduce the amount of metadata to maintain besides the user data and makes it easier to implement RAID or erasure coding in the future. pblk implements multi-tenant support and can be instantiated multiple times on the same drive. Each instance owns a portion of the SSD - both regarding I/O bandwidth and capacity - providing I/O isolation for each case. Finally, pblk also exposes a sysfs interface that allows user-space to peek into the internals of pblk. The interface is available at /dev/block//pblk/ where is the block device name exposed. This work also contains contributions from: Matias Bjørling <matias@cnexlabs.com> Simon A. F. Lund <slund@cnexlabs.com> Young Tack Jin <youngtack.jin@gmail.com> Huaicheng Li <huaicheng@cs.uchicago.edu> Signed-off-by: Javier González <javier@cnexlabs.com> Signed-off-by: Matias Bjørling <matias@cnexlabs.com> Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com> 2017-04-15 18:55:50 +00:00			`pblk: Physical Block Device Target`
			`==================================`

			`pblk implements a fully associative, host-based FTL that exposes a traditional`
			`block I/O interface. Its primary responsibilities are:`

			`- Map logical addresses onto physical addresses (4KB granularity) in a`
			`logical-to-physical (L2P) table.`
			`- Maintain the integrity and consistency of the L2P table as well as its`
			`recovery from normal tear down and power outage.`
			`- Deal with controller- and media-specific constrains.`
			`- Handle I/O errors.`
			`- Implement garbage collection.`
			`- Maintain consistency across the I/O stack during synchronization points.`

			`For more information please refer to:`

			`http://lightnvm.io`

			`which maintains updated FAQs, manual pages, technical documentation, tools,`
			`contacts, etc.`