Microsemi Provides Cloud Infrastructure Customer with Differentiated PCIe Switch Alternative
ALISO VIEJO, Calif.—March 7, 2017—Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced Wiwynn®, a leading cloud infrastructure provider of high quality computing and storage products, plus rack solutions for data centers, has selected Microsemi’s Switchtec PCIe Switch devices to optimize the company’s development of high quality computing and storage solutions for leading data centers.
The Switchtec products are optimized for NVM Express (NVMe) just a bunch of flash (JBOF) applications, providing high density and port count PCIe switches with differentiating features such as native x2 bifurcation, and the ability to customize functionality for cloud applications. These features enable customers to use a single-chip PCIe switch to connect multiple PCIe NVMe solid state drives (SSDs) while extending flexibility in the firmware to optimize the switch for their specific application needs. Microsemi estimates the Switchtec products deliver 60 percent power savings and 75 percent fewer devices when compared with alternative solutions.
“We are pleased tier-one data center providers like Wiwynn can benefit from our Switchtec products and the capabilities they offer to the storage, server and data center markets, as these devices provide not only choice in the industry, but also offer innovative features optimized around the rapidly growing PCIe NVMe use cases,” said Derek Dicker, vice president and business unit manager for performance storage at Microsemi.
Microsemi Switchtec PCIe devices are ideal for a number of data center applications such as enterprise storage systems, storage servers and Rack Scale Architecture infrastructure providing anything from simple fan-out connectivity all the way to complex implementations for host-redundancy and failover with enclosure management. Using simple hardware configuration and advanced diagnostics and debug capabilities, the Switchtec products enable PCIe solutions for a wide variety of systems from scalable JBOFs to general purpose applications requiring high density, low power and high-reliability PCIe switching.
Wiwynn selected Microsemi’s Switchtec PCIe switches for its new 19” 1U All-Flash NVMe JBOF-Thunder (ST300), which enables data center operators to leverage the benefits of the OCP Lightning (ST7200). Thunder supports two PCIe 3.0 x16 connections directly from servers to 24 hot-pluggable U.2 NVMe SSDs to provide ultrahigh performance and low latency data access.
“We are pleased to work with Microsemi to utilize its innovative Switchtec PCIe switches on our Thunder project,” said Steven Lu, chief of product marketing at Wiwynn. “Microsemi made it possible for us to utilize a single-chip PCIe switch to connect multiple PCIe NVMe SSDs with the ability to enlarge the topology to support more NVMe SSD devices with high capacity and performance. This allowed us to optimize these devices for various applications quickly and easily.”
According to market research firm IDC’s report titled, “Worldwide Solid State Drive Forecast, 2015-2019,” the industry is transitioning toward PCIe-based SSDs, with these devices estimated to be more than 40 percent of enterprise SSD revenue by 2019. With target applications including PCIe SSD enclosures, flash arrays, multi-host architectures and high density and blade servers, Microsemi’s Switchtec PCIe switches are engineered to scale PCIe flash in high-performance data center applications, providing high-reliability PCIe with advanced error containment capabilities, the industry’s most flexible port bifurcation and lowest power, and the industry’s highest port and NTB density.
About Microsemi’s PCI Express Product Portfolio Microsemi is a premier supplier of high value-add PCIe products including the scalable, low power, high-reliability PFX family of PCIe Gen3 fanout switches, the programmable PSX family of PCIe Gen3 storage switches, and the low power, multi-protocol, adaptive EQNOX™ family of signal conditioners with FlexEQ™ equalization technology supporting PCIe Gen3 and PCIe Gen2. Microsemi’s PCIe family is key to building low power and high-reliability data center, communications, defense and industrial servers; workstations; switches; routers; cellular infrastructure and test equipment. For more information about Microsemi’s PCIe portfolio, visit http://www.microsemi.com/produ