Most hard drives andSSDExposing its storage capacity through a block storage interface, where the driver stores blocks of fixed size (usually 512 bytes or4KB) and they are identified by logical block addresses, usually 48 or 64 bits. The key-value driver extends the model so that the driver can support variable-size values instead of fixed-size LBA, and variable-size values instead of fixed 512B or 4kB blocks. This allows key-value drivers to be used more or less as alternatives to software key-value databases such as RocksDB and as backends for building applications on key-value databases.

When used to replace software - based key - value databases, key - value SSDs are possible from.The serverCPU unloads a large amount of workload. More importantly, moving the key-value interface to SSD itself means that it can be tightly integrated with the flash conversion layer of SSD, thus reducing the overhead of analog block storage devices and tiering variable size storage systems. This means that key-value SSD can run at lower write magnification and higher performance than the software key-value database, with only one layer of discarded data to be collected in the stack, not one layer in the SSD and one layer in the database.

Samsung has been working on key-value SSD. They have been developing open source software to support key-value SSD, including the basic libraries and drivers needed to access key-value SSD, as well as sample benchmarking tools and the back end of Eph. Samsung platform development suite software for key-value SSD initially only supports Samsung's own software API. Today, it also supports supplier-neutral SNIA standard API. It is an API independent of advanced transmission and can use NVMe, SAS or SATA interfaces.