FMS: IntelliProp Demonstrated Gen-Z 1.0 Compliant IP

IntelliProp, Inc., in IP cores and semiconductors for storage and memory applications demonstrated technology at Flash Memory Summit 2018 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, on August 7-9, 2018.

It demonstrated its Gen-Z IP compliant with the Gen-Z Consortium Core Specification Rev 1.0. The demo showcased connectivity utilizing the IntelliProp IPA-GZ194-CT ‘Mamba’ DRAM memory controller ASSP.

Also demonstrated during the show: The IntelliProp IPC-GZ189-DT Gen-Z responder, the IPC-GZ190A-HI requester, the IPC-GZ198-ZM link layer and the IPC-GZ196-ZM physical layer for 802.3 Phy IP.

The IntelliProp ‘Mamba’ ASSP is a Gen-Z DRAM memory controller which was demonstrated as part of the SMART modular Gen-Z Memory Module (ZMM). The SMART modular ZMM is a Gen-Z SFF-8201 form factor module utilizing the SFF-TA2002 4C connector for 16 lanes of connectivity.

“IntelliProp is very active in the Gen-Z Consortium,” said Larry Cleland, director, sales and marketing, IntelliProp. “It is exciting to be the first company to have and to demo Gen-Z IP that is compliant with Revision 1.0 of the Gen-Z Consortium Core Specification.“

IntelliProp has also demonstrated two additional IPs at FMS 2018, 1) the IPC-NV163-DT NVMe Target IP Core reference design, and 2) the IPP-NV186-BR NVMe to SATA protocol bridge reference design.

The NVMe Target provides a hardware accelerated queue management interface for NVMe commands and completions as well as providing the NVMe controller register interface for host communication and controller management.

“We manage the command and completion queues in hardware to accelerate performance by off-loading the processor from needing to handle numerous interrupts,” said Hiren Patel, VP, business development, IntelliProp. “The NVMe Target IP Core is shipping today for Xilinx and Intel FPGAs including the latest UltraScale+ and Arria 10 FPGAs.“

The IPP-NV186-BR, NVMe to SATA protocol bridge uses the IntelliProp NVMe Target IP Core and the IntelliProp IPC-SA156-HI SATA AHCI host core to create an NVMe-to-SATA protocol bridge. The bridge is architected such that the command submissions, completion notifications and data transmissions are passed through for analysis or modification. The architecture implements a software ‘sandbox’ area in the bridge so that IntelliProp customers may implement custom RTL and/or firmware in the bridge.

“Our NVMe to SATA Bridge IP Reference design is shipping today and allows our customers to attach SATA Based SSD and HDD drives into NVMe slots. This allows for low cost HDDs to attach to servers which might not have SATA based HBAs available,” said Patel.