Information Technology
STORAGE I/O MANAGEMENT UNIT FOR SOLID-STATE DRIVES
WARF: P230116US01
Inventors: Michael Swift, Sujay Yadalam
The Invention
UW-Madison researchers have created a fast storage innovation that can achieve good performance while enabling secure sharing of devices amongst applications. The design repurposes the existing hardware mechanisms for translating memory addresses to also provide translation for internal storage addresses, namely the IOMMU.
While other technologies exist to allow direct device access, this innovation does not allow access to files (only raw devices) and does not support shared access from multiple applications. First, a kernel maps a file into user space at a “File Virtual Address” (FVA) and creates augmented page table entries for this address. Then the user process accesses the device directly using instructions along with FVA and a process address space ID. The device employs IOMMU to translate FVA to Logical Block Addresses (LBA); translation fails if user doesn't have access permissions.
Additional Information
For More Information About the Inventors
Tech Fields
For current licensing status, please contact Emily Bauer at [javascript protected email address] or 608-960-9842