Integrated Device Technology: Enterprise flash memory controller uses NVMe

Integrated Device Technology: Enterprise flash memory controller uses NVMe

Solid-state drives are taking over for all but large data storage. And now, Integrated Device Technology is sampling the industry’s first NVM Express (NVMe) enterprise flash memory controller with native support for PCIe Gen 3. Using PCIe to interface to flash storage can make it considerably faster than SAS and SATA, and with much lower latency. For a hard drive it didn’t really matter, but for the newer faster flash-based drives it can really speed things up. Companies have already implemented PCIe SSDs with proprietary host control interfaces in some storage systems, but now there is a standard, NVMe 1.1, to build to. And IDT is the first to have a chip for the job.

Two versions are offered, 16 channels with PCIe x4 (89HF16P04AG3) and 32 channels with PCIe x8 (89HF32P08AG3). There are no systems available yet to test, but when they are, look for some interesting performance jumps. SSDs based on this controller will be over six times faster than current enterprise SATA 6G units.

The devices handle up to 4-Tbyte capacity using 64-Gbit flash chips. XTS-AES-256 encryption is provided for, along with a strong ECC engine. The chips are currently sampling and come in 27 x 27- and 40 x 40-mm FCBGA packages. IDT is not releasing price information at this time, but we can say these devices target only enterprise computing at this point.

Integrated Device Technology (IDT) , San Jose , CA
Sales 408-284-8200
www.idt.com