It supports 15/16nm TLC and 3D NAND memory

Dec 8, 2014 14:51 GMT  ·  By

NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) solid state drives are SSDs designed with an interface accessed through the PCI Express interface rather than SATA. Marvell has just unveiled a controller that can drive them without the use of DRAM.

Normally, DRAM memory chips are used as buffer memory for solid state drives. Marvell wanted a controller that didn't do that, but still enabled the high performance that NVMe drives are known for.

NVMe SSDs aren't necessarily designed for the PCI Express slot, but they do use the bus, like M.2 SSDs wired via PCI Express instead of SATA.

The company sees the chip powering solid state drives used in digital entertainment, in-home content delivery, cloud infrastructure, mobile communications to storage and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The Marvell 88NV1140 and 88NV1120

Yes, there are actually two chips, but they differ much in terms of implementation, if not in the type of NAND chips they are meant to drive. More specifically, only the former has PCIe NVME support.

Indeed, the former is made for triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory chips and 3D NAND NVME SSDs, the latter for SATA bus units.

The 88NV1140 has both AHCI and NVMe support over PCIe Gen3x1 and L1.2 low power management design.

The architecture is ARM-based. In fact, the chip has a dual-core design with two Cortex A5 chips, embedded SRAM memory with hardware accelerators (optimized IOPS performance) and ONFI3 and Toggle2 NAND support.

Furthermore, NANDEdge error-correction is included, for both 15nm / 16nm TLC and 3D NAND support using LDPC technology (boosts reliability and endurance).

Finally, the CMOS processor is based on 28nm and the BGA SSD and M.2/2.5 slim form factors are supported (with thermal optimization in small package size of 8 x 8 mm).

The Marvell 88NV1120 is largely similar, except that, as we said, it is only made for SATA 6Gb/s support and SATA DevSlp.

Availability

Makers of solid state drives around the world should already be able to place orders with Marvell, especially if they intend to create low-thickness tablets, Chromebooks / Chromboxes or 2-in-1 hybrid tablet/PC platforms.

"As mobile computing and cloud-based services become an integral part of our daily lives, fast, secure, reliable and cost effective storage solutions with a small form factor are the key to bringing the benefit of technology to the mass market. I believe our latest game-changing SSD controller will drive the fast deployment of a new wave of small form factor SSD solutions for the mass market mobile computing platforms," said Weili Dai, President and Co-Founder of Marvell.

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Marvell launches new SSD controller (4 Images)

Mushkin Reactor SSD, one of many SSDs using Marvell controllers
SanDisk Ultra II SSD may not use TLC or 3D NAND, but it does have a Marvell controllerMarvell 88SS1093, a sort of alternative to the 88NV1140
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