Shorten Time to Market for NVM Express Based Storage Solution

A number of technical and business trends are converging to create a booming market for solid state drives (SSDs), with gigabytes of flash memory capacity along with the related control electronics packaged in the form factor of a 1.8”‐, 2.5”‐ or 3.5”. storage device. The first is the emergence of tablets and pervasiveness of smart phones both of which use flash as their main storage. The resulting demand has created innovation in manufacturing and packaging of flash and is driving declining storage cost and increasing the R&D investments to improve flash subsystem performance. The second trend is the continuing growth of “big data”, data analytics and the resulting need for faster transaction processing on the ever expanding and proliferating server/storage data center farms. SSDs are being rapidly deployed to increase transactions per second at a fraction of the cost otherwise required to achieve the same result. Lower Power consumption in SSD drives is another important factor that works as a tail wind push to this growth trajectory.

This white paper (you do not need to register) will examine these trends and in detail the underlying interconnect technology revolution that is enabling SSDs to meet the high performance that servers are demanding. We all have experienced that flash based storage in consumer devices (Tablets, Smart phones and Notebooks) is giving much better user experience . But in the server space a new standard is fast emerging named NVM Express (NVMe), a PCI Express ® based scalable host controller interface that uses solid state drives to serve as the data storage element for enterprise, data center and client systems. Defined by an industry group that includes Cisco, Dell, EMC, HGST, Intel, LSI Corporation, Micron, NetApp, Oracle, PMC‐Sierra, Samsung, SanDisk and Seagate, NVMe has been architected to deliver unprecedented performance that is demanded by the cloud based servers of today.

Mobiveil’s Universal NVM Express Controller (UNEX) is highly flexible and configurable design targeted for both Enterprise and client class solutions that unlock the current and future potential of PCIe-based SSDs. The UNEX controller core efficiently supports multi-core architectures ensuring thread(s) may run on each core with their own queue and interrupt without any locks required. It provides support for end-to-end data protection, security and encryption as well as robust error reporting and management capabilities. The controller architecture is carefully tailored to optimize link and throughput utilization, latency, reliability, power consumption, and silicon footprint.

Mobiveil’s UNEX controller can be used along with its PCI Express controller (GPEX), DDR4/3 and Flash controller (IFC) IPs for a complete NVMe implementation.

The UNEX controller comes with 2 flavors:
• Native UNEX Controller with proprietary control and Data path interfaces
• UNEX Controller with AXI Control and Data path interfaces for easy adoption in an SoC implementation

UNEX Controller design is independent of implementation tools and target technology. Mobiveil solution allows the licensees to easily migrate among FPGA, Gate array and Standard cell technologies optimally.

Deliverables

• Verilog RTL
• HVL based test bench and behavioral models, test cases, Protocol checkers, bus watchers and performance monitors
• Configurable synthesis shell
• NVM Device FW Stack
• Documentation

Features

• Compliant to NVM Express 1.1 specification
• Support for configurable number of IO Queues and configurable Queue depth
• Support for Round Robin or Weighted Round Robin with Urgent Priority arbitration mechanism
• Host memory page size support of 128MB
• Efficient and streamlined command handling
• Supports Fused Operations
• Supports Multi-Path IO and Namespace Sharing capabilities
• Supports All Optional Admin Commands and NVM Commands
• Optional AXI interfaces for NVMe implementation in SoC
• Well defined Command Interface for local CPU to perform subsystem initialization and to handle all non-hardware accelerated commands

About Mobiveil, Inc.
Mobiveil is a fast‐growing technology company that specializes in development of SIP, platforms and solutions for the networking, storage and enterprise markets. Mobiveil team leverages decades of experience in delivering high‐quality, production‐proven, high speed serial interconnect SIP cores and custom and standard form factor hardware boards to leading customers worldwide. With a highly motivated engineering team, dedicated integration support, flexible business models, strong industry presence through strategic alliances and key partnerships, Mobiveil solutions have added tremendous value to the customers in executing their product goals within budget and on time.