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>

1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/lightnvm/pblk.txt b/Documentation/lightnvm/pblk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..1040ed1cec81
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+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.