Microchip introduces industry’s first Gen 4 Tri-mode Smart Storage controllers

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.

To this end, Microchip announced the 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 — which also provide proven security and manageability features for the most demanding server storage applications.

“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, VP 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 percent 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.

Deployment tools
Microchip’s new Smart Storage platform offerings are supported by the company’s common set of deployment tools. These include maxView storage manager, ARCCONF management tools, DMTF’s standards-based PLDM/RDE and ChipLink diagnostic tools.

SmartROC 3200/SmartIOC 2200 storage controllers are available in volume production quantities, featuring up to 32 ports of SAS/SATA/NVMe connectivity.