ZNS - Avoiding the Block Interface Tax for Flash-based SSDs
Explore the Zoned Namespace (ZNS) interface for flash-based SSDs in this USENIX ATC '21 conference talk. Discover how ZNS offers a solution to the rising block interface tax by exposing flash erase block boundaries and write-ordering rules. Learn about the impact on SSD hardware/firmware and host software, and understand how storage software can be specialized for ZNS semantics. Examine the modifications required to support ZNS SSDs and see how adapted versions of f2fs and RocksDB leverage ZNS to achieve higher throughput and lower tail latency compared to traditional block-interface SSDs. Gain insights into the significant efficiency benefits, including 2–4× lower 99.9th-percentile random-read latency and 2× higher write throughput for zone-specialized RocksDB on ZNS SSDs.