FADU puts a file system inside an SSD, with samples due in Q3 2027

South Korean storage controller designer FADU has unveiled a file-semantic solid-state drive that moves file lookup, access checks and file-to-address translation into the drive’s firmware. The company says this could let GPUs, DPUs and network cards access files without a host file system, block layer or storage-server CPU in the path. Partner samples are not expected until Q3 2027.

FADU’s File-Semantic SSD (FS-SSD) uses NFS version 3 requests inside standard NVMe commands. Its design combines file lookup with the SSD’s flash translation layer, using a file layer based on F2FS. FADU says its measurements show the host file system and block layer consume about 30% of CPU cycles in a GPUDirect Storage random-read workload; that vendor figure has not been independently reproduced.

The company also reports 63% lower write amplification than F2FS running on a regular host, based on simulations with NVMeVirt rather than a physical drive. In a preliminary test, remote file throughput stayed near 460,000 ops/s as the server was reduced from 16 cores to one. A standard Linux NFS server fell from roughly 150,000 ops/s to 40,000. FADU’s Gen6 drive was tested in a PCIe 5.0 host, limiting sequential read results to about 14.1GB/s.

The concept has precedents in research, including the 2018 DevFS paper, but FADU says FS-SSD is the first file-semantic SSD. The company has not submitted a file-semantic command set to NVM Express or OCP Storage, so clients currently need FADU software. A reference design using Xsight Labs’ 800G E1 DPU is due by the end of 2027.