PLDA and Epostar to Demonstrate New PCIe/NVMe Solution, Delivering the Increased Throughput and Decreased Latency Required for Today's PCIe SSD Storage Applications

New PCIe and NVMe Solution to be Unveiled at Flash Memory Summit in San Jose, California

SAN JOSE, Calif., August 1, 2016 -- PLDA, the industry leader in PCI Express® interface IP solutions, and Epostar, the industry expert in NVMe applications, today announced a demonstration of an innovative development platform enabling PCIe® and NVMe for storage applications. This demonstration is the next step in PLDA’s focus on the storage market. Following the release of the industry’s first PCIe 4.0 platform ideal for storage companies, today’s announcement delivers a full solution for NVMe applications and provides cutting edge technology for PCIe SSD drive while delivering significant latency and performance benefits for SSD storage applications. The demonstration can be viewed in PLDA and Epostar’s booths (Booth 904 and 653) at the Flash Memory Summit, being held in San Jose, California on August 9-11, 2016.

Internet-based storage and cloud computing have rapidly increased the need to manage “big data,” and have created a growth explosion in server-based data storage sites. IC designers creating products for this space focus on generating high speed, low latency components. Incorporating an industry-standard PCIe interface allows designers to more easily deliver ultra-low latency and high data rates by enabling throughput of up to 6.6 Gb/sec, PCIe 3.0 in an x8 configuration. Because PCIe is an industry standard, it provides an easy path to PCIe 4.0 solutions, which can further improve the throughput to 16GT/s per lane combining PCIe 4.0 and NVMe technologies.

In this demonstration, a PLDA Xilinx Kintex UltraScale-based XpressKUS board will be set up to function as an NVMe RAMDisk and will include a PLDA XpressRICH3-AXI PCIe 3.0 Controller combined with an Epostar NVMe IP. This demonstration will validate compatibility between the NVMe IP and the PCIe controller and will showcase a transfer of files between the host and the SSD generated via a stress test on the SSD drive.

According to Arnaud Schleich, CEO of PLDA, “PLDA has been an industry leader in PCIe innovation for almost two decades and is proud to advance both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe/NVMe development to meet customer needs within the storage industry. Streamlining designs while increasing performance through the use of an industry-standard interface like PCIe, will be a key market differentiator for innovative SSD designers.”

“EpoStar NVMe IP is not only compliant with the NVMe specification, but rather to take great advantage of this industry standard. Its architecture is defined in a way to bring excellent performance and flexibility to the next generation of SSD. We are pleased to partner with PLDA providing customers a seamless and quick time-to-market solution.” Said Minghau Lee, CEO of EpoStar.

About the EpoStar NVMe Controller Core:

NVMe Controller Core (Meissa) is compliant with NVM Express 1.2 specification and targets for both enterprise and client SSD markets. It is a highly hardware automated design that requires minimum software involvement from the CPU. It supports out-of-order IO Read data transfer and PRP pre-fetch which can boost the IOPS performance and minimize the Read latency. The end-to-end data protection and error handling mechanism of Meissa enable robust and reliable SSD products. Meissa is highly flexible and can be configured to fit in requirements of different applications. Meissa is delivered with a complete development package for the ease of use in both FPGA and SoC integration.

About the PLDA XpressRICH3-AXI PCIe Controller Board:

XpressRICH3-AXI is an enterprise class PCIe interface Soft IP with a configurable AMBA AXI3/AXI4 user interface and high-performance DMA address translation, ECAM, TrustZone, data protection (ECC, ECRC), endpoint and root port support. With SR-IOV, 6 BARs+ EPROM and Open interrupt interface supports, it enables NVMe and SATA Express implementation. Benefiting from a close collaboration with ARM®, XpressRICH3-AXI is the most advanced PCIe interfacing solution for ARM embedded processors, featuring a unique architecture and features specifically engineered for AMBA AXI based System-on-Chip

Learn More:
To learn more about PLDA’s PCIe/NVMe platform or to view the demo, visit PLDA at the Flash Memory Summit in Booth #904. If you are not attending the Flash Memory Summit, please visit PLDA’s website at www.plda.com or contact us at sales@plda.com to set up a time to demo or test the PCIe/NVMe solution.

About PLDA

PLDA has been successfully delivering PCI and PCI Express IP for more than 20 years. With over 6,200 licenses, PLDA has established a vast customer base and the world’s broadest PCIe ecosystem. PLDA has maintained its leadership over four generations of PCI Express specifications, enabling customers to reduce risk and accelerate time to market for their ASIC and FPGA based designs. PLDA provides a complete PCIe solution with its IP cores, FPGA boards for ASIC prototyping, PCIe BFM/testbench, PCIe drivers and APIs. PLDA is a global company with offices in North America (San Jose, California) and Europe (France, Italy, Bulgaria).

About EpoStar

EpoStar Electronics Corporation was founded in December 2014 by a group of semiconductor professionals with accumulated more than 200 years of SSD experiences. In EpoStar, we focus on developing industry-leading silicon IPs, FTL algorithms, and controller architecture for SSDs. Our mission is to enable cost effective movement of “Big Data” to NVM by delivering new generation of SSD-based storage solutions for Data Center, Cloud, and Client applications.