New Consortium Dedicated to PCIe

The University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL), an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance services for the networking industry, announced the laboratory is currently accepting enterprise server and storage companies as members of a new consortium dedicated to PCIe – a storage technology that accelerates performance of demanding, data-intensive enterprise and data center applications.

Launched July 1, 2013, the PCIe Consortium will supplement testing services offered through several of the UNH-IOL’s existing storage and mobile consortia, further helping members reduce the amount of time and money spent on the testing required for introduction of new PCIe products to the market.

As a trusted independent voice on storage technologies, UNH-IOL senior technical staff member David Woolf educated attendees about NVMe, a protocol which uses the PCIe interface, during two presentations at Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, CA.

Faced with the challenge of big data, enterprises and data center operators seek storage solutions that offer faster processing throughput and greater storage performance. Using PCIe as an SSD interface allows implementors to connect storage devices directly to the chipset within a server, eliminating the requirement of a HBA that is common among other alternative SSD interfaces. As a result of this direct connection, PCIe alleviates I/O bottlenecks, speeds throughput and decreases latency to optimize server performance. This enhancement in operational efficiency allows enterprises and operators to meet demands of big data and ensure faster, seamless delivery of services, such as data-intensive applications reliant on virtualization and cloud computing, online transaction processing and video on demand.

The PCIe Consortium is a vendor-neutral environment where member companies can verify the conformance of their products to the latest PCIe specification, PCIe Gen 3. By performing conformance tests on PCIe products submitted by member companies, the laboratory’s experienced technical team frees in-house engineers from the time-consuming burden of testing each individual PCIe Gen 3 lane – a task which often requires multiple rounds of evaluation. Upon completion of testing, the UNH-IOL team works with the member company to analyze results and determine if further testing is needed to ensure optimal performance of their PCIe product. Members of the PCIe Consortium also have access to costly test equipment, eliminating the expense required to set-up and operate their own multivendor environment.

The UNH-IOL will continue to evolve its testing services for current and future member companies as new enterprise storage requirements and challenges emerge in the market. Within the PCIe Consortium, the UNH-IOL will leverage its domain experience in storage technologies like SAS and SATA to expand testing capabilities. By the end of 2013, the consortium will incorporate testing services for the SATA Express interface. In addition, the UNH-IOL has plans to offer testing services for Mobile PCIe in the near future.