Transport bridge and protocol device for efficient processing in a data storage environment

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of data storage devices each having a storage device controller and a non-volatile memory (NVM);
• and
• a bridge device coupled to each of the plurality of data storage devices and having a bridge device controller configured to interface with each of the storage device controllers and an external client device, the bridge device controller configured to present a unitary namespace as an available memory store to the client and to allocate individual namespaces from the NVMs of the data storage devices to form a consolidated namespace to support data transfer operations from the client device.

A solid-state drive (SSD), comprising:

• a non-volatile memory (NVM) comprising NAND flash memory;
• and
• a controller configured to operate as an NVMe controller via an interface for an external client device to present a unitary namespace in accordance with an NVMe specification, the controller further configured to operate as a virtual client device for a plurality of additional SSDs coupled to the SSD via a second interface.