Date: 08/08/2011

IDT and Dell to present NVMe specs at the flash memory summit on Aug 9-11

Integrated Device Technology, Inc. (IDT) has announced that it will be co-presenting with Dell on the NVM Express (NVMe) specification at the upcoming Flash Memory Summit, held in Santa Clara, CA on August 9-11.

Peter Onufryk, director of engineering in the Enterprise Computing Division at IDT, will present "NVM Express - The Interface Standard for PCI Express SSDs" along with Kevin Marks, principal engineer and technology strategist in the Storage Architecture and CTO Group at Dell. The presentation will provide a detailed technical overview of NVM Express, describe target usage models, and discuss motivation for design decisions.

NVM Express, formally called Enterprise NVMHCI, is an industry standard interface for PCI Express (PCI) Solid State Drives (SSDs) developed within the NVMHCI work group by industry leaders from over 80 companies. Although initially motivated by enterprise applications and a performance target of more than one million IOPS, the objective of the workgroup was to define an interface standard that scales all the way from client to enterprise. The NVM Express 1.0 standard was published in March 2011 and defines a PCI Express transport and lightweight NVM-optimized command set for PCIe SSDs. By eliminating the need for proprietary drivers, NVMe is helping to drive the adoption of PCIe SSDs for higher throughput and lower latency, dramatically improving storage performance, as per IDT.

"With the publishing of the NVMe 1.0 standard, standard software drivers and features for PCIe SSDs is becoming a reality and driving industry adoption. IDT has been working with other industry leaders to define the specification and we're pleased to see it get to this stage," said Kam Eshghi, senior director of marketing in the Enterprise Computing Division at IDT. "As a holder of a permanent board seat on the promoter's group of the NVMHCI work group, we are happy to be able to assist in educating the public on the benefits of NVMe and PCIe SSDs."

"Dell has been driving the NVMe standard along with companies like IDT since the inception of the NVMHCI work group. The benefits of PCIe SSDs will have a profound effect on enterprise computing applications," said Kevin Marks, principal engineer and technology strategist in the Storage Architecture and CTO Group at Dell. "Virtualized computing is driving performance requirements to new levels, and the use of PCIe SSDs is a key element in meeting these requirements."