World's First NVMe Enterprise Flash Controllers Announced

IDT, a global specialist in oscillator manufacturing, announced today at its Korean branch, through Senior Marketing Director KAM Eshghi, that it has launched the world's first enterprise-grade Flash controller.

The newly announced Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Express enterprise flash controller is being handled by IDT's Computing Business Unit and is reportedly targeting PCI Express, which is currently used in server-class computers. In particular, to establish a standard suitable for PCI Express, industry standards were created in collaboration with the relevant sector, with leading companies such as EMC, NEDEC, Samsung, and IDT participating in the current working group.

The market for these PCIe Enterprise SSDs has been growing at a rate of more than tenfold since 2011, and it is projected to reach approximately 3,497,000 by 2015. It was stated that this growth would gain further momentum with the establishment of the NVM standard. Here, IDT currently holds a market share of % .

Based on market size, the client SSD market appears larger than the enterprise SSD market, but in terms of actual monetary value, they are nearly identical. Currently, IDT is used exclusively for enterprise projects.

Although these SSDs were not widely used in the market due to previous price resistance, prices have now dropped significantly, giving them a competitive edge. Furthermore, unlike in the past, computing usage generates a large amount of DB traffic, requiring the functionality of SSDs that allow for easy data transfer and rewriting. Therefore, in enterprise-level systems, SSDs are placed at the front in PCIe, while less frequently used components are placed in hard storage.

In addition, regarding IDT's enterprise flash controller, it was announced that the product was commercialized by incorporating IDT's flash controller into a chip made by Micron in a server card made by Gen2 EMC2.

In addition, Dell also used IDT's Gen2 controller for server storage.

While IDT has commercialized products starting from PCIG1 up to 2, the announcement being made this time can be considered Gen3. SATA 6G currently sold on the market is Gen3, achieving a maximum speed of 600 Mbyte/sec. In contrast, PCIe 4G3 Gen 3 delivers speeds of approximately 4 Gbytes, which is six times higher.

Currently, a 2.5" small form factor driver is 27mm * 27mm with 16 channels, and a PCIe card form factor that offers a slightly larger size is 40mm * 40mm with 32 channels.

Currently, IDT supplies its products to memory manufacturers such as Samsung, Hynix, Micron, and Toshiba, and the product announced today is currently in the design phase. Most notably, this product is the industry's first non-volatile memory controller.

In addition, this product is programmable, allowing engineers to program it using firmware.
Firmware capable of optimizing the characteristics of NAND is created and used by each company. This is because, unlike DRAM, which is currently standardized and optimized for specialization, NAND flash memory is not standardized; since standards vary by company, the people who truly understand the internal workings of that NAND are the employees of each individual company. Therefore, applying such controllers requires programming via firmware, and IDT's latest product is ideal for this purpose as it allows for effective use with programmable specifications. (This is particularly true when matching numerical values for wearable labels.)

There is source code embedded inside the chip. Therefore, it is suitable for creating new programs using that source code and the firmware. This source code contains the following:


The current client is a company that sells to SSD manufacturers, and it manufactures PCIe based on NVM to sell to storage OEMs, who then sell the storage to data center companies.

They also sell to intermediate storage companies. Here, they also create products directly by programming firmware using the provided controllers.

We also sell to clients like Google and DC.

In the currently available models, IDT first provides hardware, embeds firmware into that hardware, and the client further develops the embedding. IDT also provides standard software drivers.





I am using the by8 host controller.

PCI e ecosystem.

IDT's PCIe holds a significantly advantageous technical position. However, it has not established itself until now due to the lack of market standards and criteria. These have recently been newly created, namely: 1. Standards for form factors. The company that will establish these form factor standards is Dell.........., and key country boot companies include IDT, etc. Currently, it is based on Gen2 standards , and as for Gen3............

It is also an NVM standard. Additionally, IDT... established the standard Linux criteria, and the source code is currently provided through the Open Alliance. Therefore, it appears that if OEMs proceed with qualification through this alliance, they will comply with the two points mentioned above, making the qualification process easier.

In addition, since MVNe measuring instruments and the like are already being formed, the ecosystem is also growing together.

IDT is now able to announce the first flash controller that meets NVM.

This is the first to qualify for the form factor and NVM standards as a single-chip enterprise chip released in August, and as mentioned, it can be applied as optimized for clients through firmware programming.

IDT believes that through these NVM and FormTector standards, it is possible to make it easy to follow without incurring significant existing costs. By reducing latency throughput, it enables closer access to quality.