NAND-Flash-based SSD devices are gaining traction as a faster alternative to disks,
and close the performance gap between DRAM and persistent storage. SSDs are an
order of magnitude cheaper than DRAM and an order of magnitude faster than disk.
Many existing database and analytics softwares have shown improved performance
with SSDs [Dai 2010; Kang et al. 2013b; Lee et al. 2008]. Several SSD-optimized
analytics softwares, such as the SanDisk Zetascale [SanDisk 2014], have demonstrated
promising performance while using SSD as the primary data storage.Many commercial
SSD devices have adopted a high-performance PCIe interface in order to overcome the
slower SATA bus interface designed for disk [FusionIO 2014a; Memory 2014; Intel
2014]. Attempts to use flash as a persistent DRAM alternative by plugging it into a
RAM slot are also being explored [Technologies 2014].