ScalaAFA - Constructing User-Space All-Flash Array Engine with Holistic Designs

Explore a cutting-edge conference talk on ScalaAFA, a novel user-space all-flash array engine designed to maximize the performance of next-generation SSD arrays. Delve into the innovative holistic approach that addresses the software overheads in traditional AFA engines, including user-kernel context switches and internal tasks like parity preparation. Learn how ScalaAFA incorporates user-space implementation, lock-free principles, and efficient message-passing-based permission management for improved inter-thread synchronization. Discover the ingenious offloading of background I/O and parity computation to SSDs, coupled with a unique data placement policy for transparent data gathering and in-situ parity computation. Examine how ScalaAFA leverages SSD architectural innovations to tackle metadata persistence and write amplification issues. Gain insights into the impressive performance improvements achieved by ScalaAFA, including 2.5× write throughput and a 52.7% reduction in average write latency compared to state-of-the-art AFA engines.

USENIX ATC '24 - ScalaAFA: Constructing User-Space All-Flash Array Engine with Holistic Designs