FMS: Marvell Demonstrated Enterprise Data Center SSD Form Factor Storage Solutions

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. announced reference design solutions for emerging enterprise data center SSD form factor (EDSFF) implementations.

Addressing the growing need within the data center and enterprise sectors for more densely packed, higher capacity SSDs, these EDSFF reference designs are powered by the company’s latest PCIe Gen 3×4 SSD controller ICs.

The reference designs are comprised of an EDSFF board with either a pair of 8-channel 88SS1088 SSD controllers or alternatively, a pair of 8-channel 88SS1098 controllers.

In addition to these NVMe SSD controllers, the company also offers the 88NR2241 intelligent NVMe switch as part of its scalable data center storage architecture chipset solutions. The 88NR2241 can be deployed on the EDSFF board to expand capabilities and reduce TCO in cloud and enterprise data centers. The switch is designed to enable dual-port support, SSD virtualization, performance aggregation and resources management between multiple NVMe SSDs.

The 88SS1088 and 88SS1098 pairings can deliver maximum storage capacities of 32TB and are suitable for use with NAND memories from vendors.

These SSD controllers, introduced in March of this year, are based on quad-core (88SS1098) and dual quad-core (88SS1088) Arm Cortex-R5 architectures that result in up to 3.6GB/s of throughput and up to 700,000 of random IO/s.

They can be implemented in a variety of low-latency SLC, MLC orientations, including TLC and QLC.

Both of them feature Marvell’s latest generation of proprietary NANDEdge low-density parity check (LDPC) error correction technology which ensures high degree of endurance, reliability and data integrity are maintained and prolongs SSD operational lifespan.

“Marvell’s EDSFF reference designs showcase the abilities of our cloud and enterprise SSD controllers to tackle emerging requirements by enabling optimized power-performance architectures that deliver best-in-class TCO. It reiterates our deep-rooted objective of developing critical building blocks to deliver flexible, scalable, cost-effective and reliable storage solutions for enterprise and cloud data center use cases,” said Nigel Alvares, VP of SSD and data center Storage solutions, Marvell. “Through this offering, we anticipate SSD makers will be able to accelerate their time to market with optimized and customizable solutions that meet the growing and differing SSD requirements of cloud and enterprise data center operators.“

“The dynamics that are influencing the storage business mean that there is rising expectation for more memory to be accommodated into extremely space constrained enclosures, and for increasingly complex workloads to be accurately matched against available bandwidth. At the same time, there can be no compromising on either system longevity or the QoS delivered,” said Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst, Forward Insights. “EDSFF is one of the key emerging storage form factors that will lead the way forward, and with the reference design it has just introduced, Marvell is putting itself at the forefront of this progression.”

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2018.06.13 | Press Release