Broadcom Spearheads Industry-Wide Multi-Vendor U.3 Plugfest at University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory

Broadcom Inc. announced its continued commitment to lead the adoption of the U.3 (SFF-TA-1001) flexible, cost-effective reference design platform.

The company, along with industry server, system and drive providers, completed a successful inaugural U.3 Plugfest last week. The event took place at the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory, an independent provider of broad-based testing and standards conformance services for the networking industry.

“Broadcom continues to lead the ecosystem’s adoption and validation testing of emerging U.3 technologies, with its close alignment to industry-leading system OEMs and drive vendors,” said Jas Tremblay, VP and GM, data center solutions group, Broadcom. “Broadcom’s market-leading portfolio of NVMe/SAS/SATA Tri-Mode SerDes MegaRAID and HBA controllers are critical components to the enablement of in-depth testing across the U.3-ready ecosystem. This first U.3 Plugfest proves that the U.3 ecosystem is strong and ready for primetime.“

The U.3 standard defines a common bay type and connector for SAS, SATA, and NVMe devices. The creation of the standard gives  flexibility to system OEMs and data centers that want to support the latest storage technologies at the lowest cost and system complexity. The availability of this server reference platform will enable server and storage OEMs, drive manufacturers, and cable and connector suppliers to design and deploy systems based on the U.3 ecosystem.

The company’s commitment to propel U.3 into the mainstream is supported by the system and drive providers, as well as backplane and chassis manufacturers and test equipment providers.

“Toshiba Memory was the first vendor to publicly demonstrate an SSD on a SFF-TA-1001, also known as U.3, reference platformi. We are planning to deliver U.3-enabled SSDs to our OEM and data center customers, requiring simple and flexible storage solutions,” said Alvaro Toledo, VP, SSD marketing and product planning, Toshiba Memory. “U.3 enables customers to choose the right Toshiba Memory SSD for their application, whether it is SATA, value SAS, enterprise SAS or NVMe-without adding system complexity, while maintaining backward compatibility with existing SFF-8639/U.2 sockets.“

“Given this was the industry’s first U.3 Plugfest, we were particularly eager to participate in driving the validation of U.3 technology testing across the ecosystem,” said Andy Norrie, operations director, Quarch Technology Ltd. “Standardized testing efforts like these will help advance the deployment and development of U.3-based infrastructure industry-wide, so we’re pleased to be so closely involved.“