Start-Up CNEX Labs in Stealth Mode

On the web site of CNEX Labs, Inc., there is only one sentence: “Leading the evolution in big storage.” That’s all.

Here is what we found about it surfing on the web.

Based in San Jose, CA, the company was founded in June 2013 by chip and ASIC specialists.

Co-founders are:

• VP engineering Yiren Huang, a chip engineer formerly of Huawei as lead architecture team and design team on NVMe PCIe SSD development and data center networking system development, and
• VP sales Joe DeFranco, formerly at Marvell.

  CEO is Alan Armstrong, previously at Marvell and Cirrus Logic.

The start-up got $17 million in financial funding on June 10, 2014 from IDEA Fund Partners and Sierra Ventures, and then $20 million filed in August 2014 according to SEC. Walden International is also an investor that wrote on its web site about the Californian company: “CNEX Labs focuses on SSD storage for the webscale, data center and prosumer markets.”

Some other information can contribute to know what CNEX Labs is preparing:

Probably its first patent application, registered this month, is about NVMe controller for accessing remote SSDs over the Ethernet or other networks.

Trademarks registered by the start-up:

• NVMOE: ICs for computer memory; computer chips; computer memories; computer memory hardware; computer storage hardware
• NVME++: computer programs; storage access instructions; memory access commands; computer instructions for accessing electronic memory
• BSPP: electronic circuitry in a memory integrated circuit for bit level, symbol level, page level, and packet level error correction

Furthermore, the firm is a contribution member of NVMe organization, a member of PCI-SIG, and will be a gold sponsor at 2015 Non-Volatile Memories Workshop in University of California, San Diego next March 1.

Finally it’s relatively clear: CNEX Labs is preparing a controller for SSDs with PCIe and NVMe, a specification for accessing SSDs attached through PCIe bus. It’s going to be the fastest and one of the most popular interfaces for flash-based devices, and not only for enterprises.