Microchip introduces a family of high-performance PCIe 5th generation SSD controllers

     Microchip Technology announces the Flashtec NVMe 5016 SSD controller. 16-channel PCIe 5th generation NVMe controllers are designed to provide increased bandwidth, security and flexibility.

     Pete Hazen, vice president of Microchip's Data center Solutions business unit, said: "Data center technology must evolve to keep up with significant advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our fifth-generation Flashtec NVMe controllers are designed to lead the market and meet the growing demand for high-performance, power-optimized SSDS." NVMe 5016 Flashtec PCIe controllers can be deployed in the data center to facilitate efficient and secure cloud computing and business-critical applications."

     The controller is designed to support enterprise applications such as online transaction processing, financial data processing, database mining and other latency and performance sensitive applications. In addition, it meets the growing demand for AI with higher throughput for reading and writing large data sets used in model training and inference processing, and provides the high bandwidth needed to quickly move large amounts of data between storage and computing resources. With sequential read performance in excess of 14GB/s, the controller can maximize the use of valuable computing resources on traditional servers and ai acceleration servers.

     In addition to supporting the latest standard NVMe host interface, the controller is designed with high random read performance of 3.5 Megabits of IOs per second and a power profile focused on power-sensitive data center needs that delivers more than 2.5GB of data per watt. The controller uses advanced node technology, including power management features such as automatic idling of the processor core and autonomous power reduction. To support the latest flash memory, including four-layer cell (QLC), three-layer cell (TLC) and multi-layer cell (MLC) NAND technologies, the controller offers robust ECC. All Flash management operations are performed on the chip and take up negligible host processing and memory resources.

     Microchip's latest Flashtec PCIe controllers use advanced 6nm process technology to optimize power consumption for demanding applications. Greg Matson, Solidigm's senior vice president of strategic planning and marketing, said: "Its flexible architecture provides the processing power needed for cutting-edge AI workloads in a compact package. The quality and reliability of Flashtec PCIe controllers interoperable with Solidigm's QLC NAND makes them ideal for meeting the growing demands of data-intensive workloads such as artificial intelligence and machine learning."

     "Ronsi and Microchip have established a strong partnership that has driven the rapid expansion of the enterprise SSD market," said Huabo CAI, Chairman and CEO of Ronsi. Microchip's reliable and flexible PCIe Flashtec product architecture provides an excellent foundation for Longsys' enterprise solution, which incorporates multiple advanced NAND flash drives to deliver efficiency and reliability for standard or custom high-performance enterprise SSDS."

     The flexibility and scalability of the controller helps reduce the total cost of ownership, as advanced virtualization features such as single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV), multiple physical functions, and multiple virtual functions of each physical function maximize PCIe resource utilization. This consistent, programmable platform provides developers planning to use Flexible Data Placement (FDP) in SSDS with control to maximize the performance, efficiency, and reliability of flash resources on SSDS. Combined with Microchip's dynamic resource allocation credit engine, the NVMe 5016 controller enables reliable on-demand cloud services.

     "We congratulate Microchip on the introduction of the latest generation of Flashtec PCIe controllers," said matry Dholakia, vice president of Memory products at KIOXIA America. The innovative ECC in the Flashtec controller and its flexible architecture make it compatible with our advanced NAND flash products."

     "Congratulations to Microchip on the new NVMe SSD controller," said Dan Loughmiller, Director of NAND product line management and application Engineering at Micron. "As the industry's leading NAND provider, our collaboration in the data center storage ecosystem enables customers to combine our packaged NAND solutions with their new controllers. We are pleased that our collaboration continues to provide compatibility with NAND."

     As the amount of data stored increases, so does the risk of security threats, which requires robust and reliable security measures. The controller is designed to provide enterprise-class integrity and reliability, with comprehensive data protection, uninterrupted operation, and protection of confidential information.

     Security features have been integrated into the controller to help maintain the integrity of firmware and data throughout its life cycle, from factory start to retirement. These features include secure booting with hardware trust roots, two-signature authentication for easy system OEM or end-user authentication, support for various security standards through various authentication algorithms, user data protection that encrypts data in transit (link level) and data at rest (media level), and sophisticated key management practices. These practices follow strict security protocols, including the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3 Level 2 and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal standard.

     For data integrity and reliability, the controller adopts NVMe protection Information (PI) and ECC (SECDED) for end-to-end data protection, and Adaptive LDPC for advanced error correction. It also includes a fail-over recovery mechanism utilizing RAID technology to further enhance the resilience of the storage system.