August 5, 2014, Sunnyvale, CA—PMC released a new family of FlashTech NVRAM drives to create a new level of storage devices. The PCIe-based card uses DRAM with a super cap for supply backup as the main storage medium, and backs up the data on flash. This combination provides the speed and endurance of DRAM and the non-volatility of flash.
The families marry the ICs from the controller group and systems-level expertise and the PCB design capabilities from the Adaptec group. The new modules have between 4GB and 16GB of available storage and use the NVMe interface to enable plug-and-play PCIe connectivity. The cards run up to 8 lanes of PCIe for bandwidth and direct connections to the CPU. The controller makes the memory look like a storage device to the CPU, and performs al the handshakes for reads and writes. The super cap eliminates the need for uninterruptible power supplies for the storage.
PMC Flashtech NVRAM drive
The cards are directed towards the changing nature of large storage with large amounts of data in write caches and complex metadata. The existing solutions of SSD for IOPS are endurance limited with only tens of full drive possible per day. The DRAM is volatile, and needs power to maintain the data. This data is all highly volatile, high volume, and needs to be processed at high rates, calling for a solution that fills the performance and endurance gaps. The mission-critical nature of the data demands that any latencies and delays not be in the critical path of the workloads.
The arrays are capable of 10M IOPS for small blocks, and 1M IOPS for 4k blocks. The storage devices can be configured for block-based access where the LBA uses the native NVMe interface, or can be memory mapped for fast data like the metadata. The drives can be partitioned to use both methods for access. The backup transfers are software programmable and the storage can be translated to DMA.
The new storage devices are symmetrical for read and write performance and good for both small and large packets. The controlled helps to reduce CPU use with larger packet sizes. Data movement to other levels of the storage hierarchy is through buffers in the system. The Flashtec NVRAM Drives are available in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities in production quantities as early as Q4 2014. The Flashtec NVMe controllers are available in 16- and 32-channel options and are in high-volume production. For more information, visit: www.pmcs.com/flashtec.