PCIe Gen 3 NVMe NV-DRAM Controller by IDT

Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (IDT) announced a NVM Express (NVMe) enterprise non-volatile DRAM (NV-DRAM) controller with native support for PCIe Gen 3.

The new NVMe NV-DRAM controller expands upon previously announced NVMe flash controller family to provide standards-based, high-density, high-performance PCIe-attached NV-DRAM solutions built around a combination of DRAM and NAND flash devices.

The IDT 89HF08P08AG3 NV-DRAM controller supports up to 32GB of DDR3 SDRAM and 8 channels of NAND flash, with a PCIe x8 Gen 3 host interface. The controller is designed to comply with the NVMe standard – a standard that defines an optimized register interface, command set, and feature set for PCIe-based SSD. The controller enables unparalleled read and write random performance with low latency and endurance, making it for storage-intensive enterprise-class applications. The programmable controller provides OEMs the flexibility to develop and deploy NV-DRAM solutions that use standard NVM Express drivers.

"IDT continues to be at the forefront of NVMe PCI Express controller innovation. The new NVM Express NV-DRAM controller follows the industry’s first NVMe enterprise flash controller announced in August," said Kam Eshghi, senior director of marketing of the Enterprise Computing Division of IDT. "IDT’s family of NVMe flash and NV-DRAM controllers  boosts the number of random IOPS that a system can process. At the same time, the devices eliminate the traditional SAS and SATA storage infrastructure and thereby reduce latency, power and cost. NVMe is enabling a paradigm shift occurring in enterprise architectures and IDT’s NVM Express controllers play a central role."

The 89HF08P08AG3 reads and writes data directly into DDR3 DRAM at speeds of up to 3GBps. When it detects power-down, the DRAM contents are backed up into NAND flash. With up to eight NAND flash channels and eight targets per channel, this backup operation can be performed with a write bandwidth of up to 1GBps, depending on flash type and number of targets utilized. The 89HF08P08AG3 supports up to 32GB of DDR3 SDRAM, with configurable data rate from DDR3-800 through DDR3-1600. The datapath is 72-bit wide (64-bit data and 8-bit ECC) with four ranks, and it supports x8 and x16 SDRAM data widths.

As with IDT’s PCIe flash controllers, the new controller is programmable, enabling customers to differentiate their solutions with custom firmware that leverages IDT’s reference firmware. In addition, 89HF08P08AG3 provides the data integrity and reliability features expected in enterprise solutions.

IDT’s NVMe flash controllers will be on display at the Intel Developer Forum, September 11-13, in San Francisco, CA.