'I don't need that much performance' and other Fables from the World of Storage

Flash memory holds the promise of revolutionizing data storage and data processing as well. Sadly in the form of the SSD it has always broken this promise in the past. Principally flash SSD has suffered two major problems that have rendered it unusable in any high performance setting. SSDs have been unable to sustain consistent performance, particularly for random access patterns and they have suffered from large latency spikes far higher than promised.

And, some people think flash costs too much.

Violin Memory through a series of architectural innovations has addressed the first two problems, Moore's law (and per core licensing) have dealt with the issue of cost.

This talk will discuss what happens when equipment providing one, two, even three orders of magnitude of increased performance are deployed in the real world, how we are forced to revisit many of our basic assumptions about the nature of storage, and some suggestions for promising areas of research and/or new areas for budding entrepreneurs to explore.

Also covered will be an overview of the innovations in the Violin architecture that make this breakthrough performance possible, and finally some entertaining stories from the field.