IDT demos industry’s first enterprise NVMHCI flash controller

Flash Memory Summit 2010, SAN JOSE, USA: Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT) will be demonstrating the industry’s first Enterprise Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface (NVMHCI)-based flash controller at the Flash Memory Summit, which takes place from August 17-19 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif.

In addition, representatives from IDT and Intel will be co-presenting a detailed overview of the Enterprise NVMHCI standard. Peter Onufryk, director of engineering in the Enterprise Computing Division at IDT, will present “Enterprise NVMHCI – Enabling Enterprise-Class PCIe SSDs with Unmatched Performance” along with Amber Huffman, principal engineer in the Storage Technologies Group at Intel and chairperson for the NVMHCI Workgroup.

Enterprise NVMHCI defines a standard programming interface for high-performance non-volatile memory subsystems. The IDT prototype is compliant with the Enterprise NVMHCI standard as it is defined today. This standard is being defined by the NVMHCI Workgroup, founded by Intel, Microsoft and Dell, and is targeted to be completed in Q4 2010.

“Broad industry adoption of PCIe SSDs is hampered by the lack of standard software drivers and features. IDT is proud to be among the group of industry leaders working to overcome this challenge by defining Enterprise NVMHCI,” said Kam Eshghi, senior director of marketing in the Enterprise Computing Division at IDT.

“IDT is fully committed to providing innovative solutions to customer challenges, and that is what the Enterprise NVMHCI standard affords the computing and storage industry. This new standard defines a programming interface and consistent enterprise-class features that enable development of standard drivers for high performance PCI Express-based solid state drives.”

The Enterprise NVMHCI standard increases parallelism and streamlines the interface protocol for improved performance. It adds data integrity and security features in enterprise applications. This standard eliminates the need for proprietary drivers, helping drive the adoption of PCIe solid state drives (SSDs).

By using PCIe SSDs, system developers can bypass older SAS/SATA hard drive technologies and connect directly to the host bus for higher throughput and lower latency, dramatically improving storage performance. The PCIe SSDs also reduce power consumption by eliminating SAS/SATA SerDes power as well as HBA controllers and their associated SerDes power.

“Enterprise NVMHCI has made great progress during the past year, with these first products as yet another milestone,” said Amber Huffman, principal engineer in the Storage Technologies Group at Intel and chairperson for the NVMHCI Workgroup. “Enterprise NVMHCI defines a standard interface and consistent feature set that allow development of standard drivers for high-performance PCIe SSDs.”