The OpenSSD Project

An alternative to blobbed drive firmware.

http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project

I would like to share this and ask for opinions before I add it to the wiki.

It is really neat that you can upgrade the memory chips individually, 
which should offset the high price.

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Hi,

On 05.04.2017 15:48, [e-mail] wrote:
> An alternative to blobbed drive firmware.
>
> http://www.openssd-project.org/wiki/The_OpenSSD_Project

Yes, Cosmos and Jasmine are really nice research platforms.

Jasmine is pretty old and you can't really use sizes above 30 GB or so.
It has a SATA interface and is really well documented.
Cosmos is new and I wouldn't yet recommend to use it as regular disk
with a normal general purpose OS because the internal wear leveling is
pretty basic. And depending on which part of the documentation you're
looking at, it also might not even be in a generally usable state
(incomplete code).
> I would like to share this and ask for opinions before I add it to the
> wiki.

You could mention it as research platform, but except for SSD related
research (graduate or PhD level) I don't see much use. If you're the
"free as in freedom" type and don't mind working with an old 30 GB SSD,
Jasmine should be stable enough to use.
> It is really neat that you can upgrade the memory chips individually,
> which should offset the high price.

Not in the foreseeable future. The base hardware is made for research
and is made in really small quantities, so the price is a few thousand
dollars higher than a mass-produced SSD controller board. Besides that,
buying flash without a controller is often more expensive than buying
flash with a controller because an attached controller can validate the
flash in-circuit, whereas without controller the flash manufacturer has
to spend money on expensive testing equipment. (See flash in SD cards
for an example.)

Besides that, it's hard to actually buy any OpenSSD platform. I tried
(for my PhD research), but never got a response from the official sales
contact. If you actually succeed, please tell me so I can buy some.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel