VNSIM: Virtual Machine based Multi-core SSD Simulator for supporting NVM Express

Jinsoo Yoo, Youjip Won

http://doi.org/10.5626/JOK.2018.45.5.427

Solid State Drives (SSD) continue to improve its performance and capacity through the adoption of new host interfaces and the use of multi-channel/multi-way I/O parallelism with multiple core controllers. In order to design and evaluate the structure of the SSDs, a new SSD simulator needs to be developed that supports the latest storage techniques. In this study, we develop a SSD simulator, the Virtual-machine based NVMe SSD SIMulator (VNSIM), which supports the latest host controller interface, NVM Express. The VNSIM simulates the entire I/O stack, from applications to Flash memories. Unlike the existing SSD simulators, the VNSIM provides an environment for simulating and evaluating SSD structures with two or more Flash Translation Layer (FTL) cores running in the SSD. We developed the Flash I/O emulator which simulates the I/O performance of the Flash memory including page cache registers. The VNSIM was validated using the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD, showing that the VNSIM models the 950 Pro SSD with a 6.2%～8.9% offset.