PCIe switch selected to enable flexible, scalable NVMe connectivity in leading data centers

Microsemi Corporation has 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 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. The company estimates the products deliver 60% power savings and 75% 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. Their 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 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. “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.”