PCIe switch selected to enable flexible, scalable NVMe connectivity

The Switchtec products are optimised for NVM Express (NVMe) just a bunch of flash (JBOF) applications, providing high density and port count PCIe switches with differentiating features such as native x2 bifurcation, and the ability to customise functionality for cloud applications. These features enable customers touse a single-chip PCIe switch to connect multiple PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives (SSDs) while extending flexibility in the firmware to optimise the switch for their specific application needs. Microsemi estimates the Switchtec products deliver 60% power savings and 75% fewer devices when compared with alternative solutions.

“We are pleased tier-one data centre providers like Wiwynn can benefit from our Switchtec products and the capabilities they offer to the storage, server and data centre markets, as these devices provide not only choice in the industry, but also offer innovative features optimised around the rapidly growing PCIe NVMe use cases,” said Derek Dicker, Vice President and Business Unit Manager for Performance Storage at Microsemi.

Microsemi Switchtec PCIe devices are well suited for a number of data centre applications such as enterprise storage systems, storage servers and Rack Scale Architecture infrastructure providing anything from simple fan-out connectivity all the way to complex implementations for host-redundancy and failoverwith enclosure management. Using simple hardware configuration and advanced diagnostics and debug capabilities, the Switchtec products enable PCIe solutions for a wide variety of systems from scalable JBOFs to general purpose applications requiring high density, low power and high-reliability PCIe switching.

Wiwynn selected Microsemi’s Switchtec PCIe switches for its 19” 1U All-Flash NVMe JBOF-Thunder (ST300), which enables data centre operators to leverage the benefits of the OCP Lightning (ST7200). Thunder supports two PCIe 3.0x16 connections directly from servers to 24 hot-pluggable U.2 NVMe SSDs to provide ultra high performance and low latency data access.

“We are pleased to work with Microsemi to utilise its innovative Switchtec PCIe switches on our Thunder project,” said Steven Lu, Chief of Product Marketing at Wiwynn. “Microsemi made it possible for us to utilise a single-chip PCIe switch to connect multiple PCIe NVMe SSDs with the ability to enlarge the topology to support more NVMe SSD devices with high capacity and performance. This allowed us to optimise these devices for various applications quickly and easily.”

According to market research firm IDC's report titled, "Worldwide Solid State Drive Forecast, 2015-2019," the industry is transitioning toward PCIe-based SSDs, with these devices estimated to be more than 40% of enterprise SSD revenue by 2019. With target applications including PCIe SSD enclosures, flash arrays, multi-host architectures and high density and blade servers, Microsemi's Switchtec PCIe switches are engineered to scale PCIe flash in high-performance data centre applications, providing high-reliability PCIe with advanced error containment capabilities, the industry's most flexible port bifurcation and lowest power, and the industry's highest port and NTB density.