Microchip Introduces High-Performance Fifth Generation PCIe® SSD Controller Family

Flashtec® NVMe® 5016 controller optimized to manage growing enterprise and data center workloads

The booming development of artificial intelligence (AI) and the rapid popularity of cloud services are driving the demand for more powerful, efficient and reliable data centers. To meet the growing market demand, Microchip Technology has launched the Flashtec® NVMe® 5016 solid-state drive (SSD) controller. This 16-channel fifth-generation PCIe® NVM Express® (NVMe) controller is designed to provide higher bandwidth, security and flexibility.

“Data center technology must evolve to keep pace with significant advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML),” said Pete Hazen, vice president of Microchip’s Data Center Solutions business unit . “Our fifth-generation Flashtec NVMe controllers are designed to lead the market in meeting the growing demand for high-performance, power-optimized SSDs. The NVMe 5016 Flashtec PCIe controller can be deployed in the data center to facilitate efficient and secure cloud computing and mission-critical applications.”

The Flashtec NVMe 5016 controller is designed to support enterprise applications such as online transaction processing, financial data processing, database mining and other latency- and performance-sensitive applications. It also meets the growing needs of artificial intelligence, providing higher throughput for reading and writing large data sets used in model training and inference processing, and providing the high bandwidth required to quickly transfer large amounts of data between storage and computing resources. With a sequential read performance of more than 14 GB per second, the NVMe 5016 controller can maximize the use of valuable computing resources in traditional servers and AI-accelerated servers under demanding workloads.

In addition to supporting the latest standard NVMe host interface, the NVMe 5016 controller also has high random read performance (3.5M IO per second), and its power consumption characteristics are focused on the needs of power-sensitive data centers, achieving more than 2.5 GB of data transfer per watt. The NVMe 5016 controller uses advanced node technology and includes power management features such as automatic idling of processor cores and autonomous power consumption reduction. To support the latest flash memory technologies such as QLC, TLC and MLC NAND, the NVMe 5016 controller provides powerful error correction code (ECC). All flash management operations are performed on-chip, with minimal consumption of host processing and memory resources.

“Microchip’s latest Flashtec PCIe controllers are built on advanced 6nm process technology to meet the power optimization requirements of demanding applications. They deliver the processing power required for cutting-edge AI workloads in a flexible architecture and compact package,” said Greg Matson, senior vice president of strategic planning and marketing at Solidigm. “The quality and reliability of Flashtec PCIe controllers, combined with excellent interoperability with Solidigm’s QLC NAND, are ideal for meeting the growing demands of data-intensive workloads such as AI and ML.”

Cai Huabo, Chairman and CEO of Longsys , said: "Longsys and Microchip have established a solid cooperative relationship and are committed to jointly promoting the rapid development of the enterprise SSD market. Microchip's reliable and flexible PCIe Flashtec product architecture provides a good foundation for Longsys' enterprise-level solutions. It uses a variety of advanced NAND flash memories to provide efficiency and reliability for standard or customized high-performance enterprise-level SSDs."

The flexibility and scalability of the NVMe 5016 controller helps reduce total cost of ownership because advanced virtualization features such as single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV), multiple physical functions and multiple virtual functions per physical function maximize PCIe resource utilization. The consistent programmable platform provides control to developers who plan to use flexible data placement (FDP) in SSDs to maximize the performance, efficiency and reliability of flash resources on SSDs. The NVMe 5016 controller combined with Microchip's Credit Engine for dynamic resource allocation enables reliable on-demand cloud services.

“We congratulate Microchip on the launch of its latest generation Flashtec PCIe controllers,” said Maitry Dholakia, vice president of memory products at KIOXIA America . “The Flashtec controllers feature innovative ECC and a flexible architecture that is compatible with our advanced NAND flash products.”

“Congratulations to Microchip on the launch of their new NVMe SSD controller,” said Dan Loughmiller, Micron’s director of NAND product line management and applications engineering . “As the industry’s leading NAND supplier, our collaboration in the data center storage ecosystem enables customers to use Micron packaged NAND solutions with this new controller. We are pleased that our collaboration will continue to provide compatibility for our NAND.”

As data storage continues to grow, the risk of security threats also increases, making robust security measures a must. The Flashtec NVMe 5016 controller is designed to provide enterprise-grade integrity and reliability through comprehensive data protection, uninterrupted operations, and protection of confidential information.

The NVMe 5016 controller integrates security features that help maintain the integrity of firmware and data throughout the lifecycle from factory to end-of-life. These features include secure boot with hardware root of trust, dual signature verification for easy verification by system OEMs or end users, support for various security standards through various authentication algorithms, user data protection with encryption of data in transit (link level) and data at rest (media level), and sophisticated key management practices. These features comply with strict security protocols, including Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-3 Level 2 and Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal standards.

In terms of data integrity and reliability, this controller provides overlapping end-to-end data protection using NVMe protection information (NVMe PI) and single error correction and double error detection (SECDED) ECC, and advanced error correction through adaptive LDPC. It also includes a failover recovery mechanism that utilizes redundant array of independent disks (RAID) technology, further strengthening the recovery capabilities of the storage system.

Visit the Data Center Solutions page of Microchip’s website to learn more about the company’s complete portfolio of data center hardware, software and development tools.

Development Tools

The Flashtec NVMe 5016 Gen5 PCIe SSD controller is supported by a tool ecosystem including PM35160-KIT and PMT35161-KIT evaluation boards with various NAND options, a software development kit (SDK) with PCIe-compatible front-end firmware, Microchip ChipLink tools for advanced debugging, and more.

Availability and Pricing

The Microchip Flashtec NVMe 5016 controller is sampling to qualified customers.

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