Smart storage platform

Server OEMs and cloud operators designing storage platforms for next-generation data centers need to deliver significantly higher performance through PCIe® Gen 4 x16 CPU interfaces and support for the latest NVMe™ SSDs and 24G SAS infrastructure. Microchip has announced production release of the first products to deliver these capabilities; the Smart Storage PCIe® Gen 4 Tri-Mode SmartROC (RAID-on-Chip) 3200 and SmartIOC (I/O Controller) 2200 storage controllers also provide proven security and manageability features for the most demanding server storage applications.

Thursday, 14th January 2021 Posted 3 years ago in by Phil Alsop

"We continue to offer the most versatile and innovative controller portfolio for an industry that is rapidly migrating to PCIe Gen4-based servers and NVMe SSDs for performance storage while continuing to leverage SAS/SATA HDDs for bulk storage,” said Pete Hazen, vice president of Microchip’s data center solutions business unit.

“Our industry firsts include support for a PCIe Gen 4 interface with DirectPath technology for low-latency NVMe transactions, and 24G SAS with Dynamic Channel Multiplexing (DCM) for more efficient aggregation of lower-speed SAS or SATA hard drives onto 24G SAS infrastructure."

SmartROC 3200 and SmartIOC 2200 products support both x8 and x16 PCIe Gen 4 host interfaces and up to 32 lanes of SAS/SATA/NVMe connectivity. Support for up to 8 GB of on-board cache triples the RAID performance compared to competitive alternatives, while DCM delivers link efficiency of greater than 99% while ensuring full interoperability with existing legacy SAS/SATA infrastructure.

Microchip’s Smart Storage stack management tools simplify integration and enhance product flexibility for system integrators. The new Smart Storage products support SFF's Universal Backplane Management (UBM), Intel® Virtual Pin Port (VPP) for intelligent backplane management, and DMTF’s standards-based Platform Level Data Model (PLDM)/Redfish® Device Enablement (RDE) specification simplifying the implementation of out-of-band management over Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP)/Baseboard Management Controller (BMC).

Microchip’s Trusted Platform support delivers a new level of compute and supply chain security based on a hardware root of trust that is aligned with the Open Compute Security Project.

Microchip has expanded on its unique maxCrypto™ Controller-Based Encryption (CBE) solution to support SAS, SATA, and now, NVMe media.