Open-channel SSD

An open-channel solid state drive is a solid-state drive which does not have a firmware Flash Translation Layer implemented on the device, but instead leaves the management of the physical solid-state storage to the computer's operating system.^[1] The Linux 4.4 kernel is an example of an operating system kernel that supports open-channel SSDs which follow the NVM Express specification, by providing an abstraction layer called LightNVM.^[2][3]

References

1. Matias Bjørling (March 12, 2015). "Open-Channel Solid State Drives" (PDF).
2. Michael Larabel (15 November 2015). "A Look At The New Features Of The Linux 4.4 Kernel". Phoronix.
3. Michael Larabel (3 November 2015). "LightNVM Support Is Going Into Linux 4.4". Phoronix.