Before the popularity of PCIe 4.0, Marvell's Bravera SSD controller based on PCIe 5.0 came

Posted by weedo on Mon, 07 Feb 2022 21:20:08 +0100

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In the storage field, Marvell has been committed to providing SSD, RAID and HBA controller chips for the industry. With the approaching of PCIe 5.0 era, Marvell released a new memory chip product line named bravera. Bravera is the abbreviation of Brave New Era, which means Marvell will provide higher performance storage solutions for data center and cloud storage.

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Marvell's new Bravera data center storage brand

     In this release, Marvell of Bravera The product line has launched two SC5 series SSD The controller supports 8 controllers respectively NAND Channeled MV-SS1331 Controller chip and support 16 NAND Channeled MV-SS1333 Controller chip. These two models SSD The controller chip is the first batch of support in the world PCIe 5.0 Speed SSD controller. follow-up, Marvell Will also be Bravera More memory controller chips will be launched under the product line.

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Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller

     In the release of two Bravera SC5 SSD While the controller chip, Marvell Also announced the SSD Cooperation and verification between controller chip and industry manufacturers. stay NAND In terms of particles, Marvell Already working with Kioxia,SK Hynix And China's Yangtze River storage( YMTC)Cooperate. because SSD The cost of the enclosure is mainly NAND Particles, so a SSD The controller adapts to the of multiple manufacturers NAND Particles are very necessary. In the field of component ecology, and AMD and Intel Cooperation is inevitable, and the final storage module needs to be obtained CPU Support from the manufacturer and be able to communicate with PCIe 5.0 Retimer Chip PCIe 5.0 Switch The chip is used together. In terms of end users, Facebook and Microsoft Such cloud vendors are places where storage modules are applied in large quantities, and they also need to be aware of new storage modules SSD The controller is verified in the early stage.

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Partner of Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller

     Marvell declare Bravera SC5 SSD The controller can not only meet the requirements of storage capacity, but also meet the requirements of IOPS Performance requirements. For storage servers, the controller can be placed in E3 and E1.L On the storage module, provide large storage capacity; For a computing server, you can place the controller in E1.S On the enclosure, it can provide high IOPS Performance.

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Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller is suitable for a variety of loads

In terms of performance data, since the signal rate of PCIe 5.0 is twice that of PCIe 4.0, the performance of SSD controller based on PCIe 5.0 will also be improved by about twice compared with PCIe 4.0 SSD controller. Marvell claims that the Bravera SC5 SSD controller has a continuous read speed of 14GB/s and a continuous write speed of 9GB/s; Random read performance can reach 2 million IOPS and random write performance can reach 1 million IOPS. The read-write delay can be less than 6us. However, since PCIe 5.0 needs to use Serdes with higher rate, there is only a 40% performance improvement in power consumption efficiency.

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Main performance of Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller

     Bravera SC5 SSD The controller is also the first flexible controller in the industry SLA(Service level agreement: Service Level Agreement)Chip. Using the chip SSD Enclosure can support SEF(Software-Enabled Flash),ZNS(Zoned Namespace)and OCP SSD Specification, therefore elasticity SLA Functions can be managed on the controller chip QoS And data queues.

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Elastic SLA function of Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller

     As mentioned earlier, Marvell In promotion Bravera SC5 SSD The controller has a flexible strategy. Not only can it match the products of different manufacturers NAND Particles can also be matched SLC/MLC/TLC/QLC These four NAND Any one of the types, which is finally presented to the user, can be E1.S or E1.L Enclosure, or U.2 or E3 Enclosure.

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Flexible collocation from SSD controller to final enclosure

     E1.S Enclosure is the focus of the industry. In the new generation moving towards the market EDSFF As can be seen in the article "storage module", compared with EDSFF Other storage module forms defined by the organization, E1.S The progress is the fastest and is already in progress Inspur,Facebook and Supermicro In the new generation of servers. stay E1.S On the enclosure, Marvell SC5 SSD The controller can support up to 16 NAND Channel, compared to M.2 Module can provide greater storage capacity.

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E1 using Marvell SC5 SSD controller S enclosure

     Marvell Optimized for cloud data centers Bravera SC5 SSD The main features of the controller are listed in the figure below. In a word, the new SSD The controller can provide higher performance and support a variety of use modes.

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Bravera SC5 SSD controller optimized for Cloud Data Center

     SC5 SSD The controller has built-in functions of data security and data protection. These security features are owned by the industry at present SSD All controllers are supporting functions.

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Built in security features of Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller

     Marvell Not only gives Bravera SC5 SSD All specifications and characteristics of the controller are listed, and the functional block diagram of the controller is also given, which is convenient for users to understand this new controller SSD Characteristics of the controller.

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Marvell Bravera SC5 SSD controller features at a glance

Summary

Bravera SC5 SSD controller chip is the first controller chip supporting PCIe Gen5 rate in the industry. Although the PCIe Gen5 ecosystem is still in its early stage, we also see that many manufacturers in the industry are moving towards building this ecosystem. In the storage field, Marvell has extensive cooperation with manufacturers in the industry, which will help promote its new SSD controller chip. When Intel and AMD CPU chips supporting PCIe Gen5 rate begin to be promoted in the market in 2022, many new generation systems with high bandwidth and low delay will emerge in the industry.