Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL)
is a leader in the development of storage, communications, and consumer silicon
solutions. The company's diverse product portfolio includes switching,
transceiver, communications controller, wireless, and storage solutions that
power the entire communications infrastructure including enterprise, metro,
home, and storage networking. As used in this release, the terms "company"
and "Marvell" refer to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and its
subsidiaries. For more information, visit http://www.marvell.com.
see
also:-
editor mentions on STORAGEsearch.com, see also:-
Marvell's SSD page
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| Marvell -
a candle showing the way in 2016 | |
Marvell entered the
the Top SSD Companies
list which is researched and published by
StorageSearch.com in
Q1 2013. And in
the Q3 2016 edition
Marvell was ranked #19.
However, those past rankings based on crowd
sourced market itelligence understate the future significance of Marvell's work
for the SSD industry.
Based on the opinion of Zsolt Kerekes
editor of StorageSearch.com - some of the work which Marvell talked
about in 2016 has a beaconlike quality which has significance for the future of
the memory systems market. And for that reason Marvell was named one of
4
shining companies in my home page blog ( December 2016). |
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editor's earlier comments:- December
2014 - Marvell is one of
30 SSD I/P SoC companies
listed here on StorageSearch.com.
Marvell's aspirations in the
PCIe SSD market first
became public in April 2011 - when the company uveiled its first PCIe SSD
related product - the DragonFly Virtual Storage Accelerator.
More
recently Marvell has collaborated on the design of a new PCIe SSD chipset used
in OCZ's enterprise range.
And Marvell controllers (with OCZ firmware) are the basis of the
Indilinx-branded "Everest 2 platform" used in some of OCZ's faster
enterprise SATA SSDs.
Until 2014 - Marvell's "high performance"
SSD controllers differed to the best known
SandForce controllers
(originally designed by SandForce,
long owned by LSI and
now owned by Seagate)
in that they supported and required external RAM.
For more about the
differences this makes to the SSD design and characteristics see my article-
RAM cache rations
in flash SSDs.
However, in December 2014 - Marvell moved into the
skinny RAM cache flash controller segment with the news it was sampling a new
skinny NVMe SSD controller - which doesn't require any external DRAM.
This
architectural decoupling from DRAM
also makes it easier for Marvell to target the market for tiny SSDs - as space
savings accrue not only from the absence of an additional memory chip - but also
the ability to use much lower capacitance hold up capacitors to cope with data
integrity in the event of
sudden power
loss. |
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In June
2008 -
Marvell
announced
its entry into the SSD controller market with the introduction of the
ultra-slim Marvell 88NV8120 PCIe based NAND flash controller, the first Marvell
product in a planned range of solid state storage controllers.
The
Marvell 88NV8120 is compatible with both Microsoft Windows and Linux operating
systems, and offers comprehensive platform support for PC motherboards.
"Marvell is leveraging more than 10 years experience in the disk drive
controller market as we enter the solid state storage segment," said Sehat
Sutardja, Marvell Chairman and Chief Executive. "Marvell is uniquely
positioned to bring the performance advantages of solid state storage to a broad
range of applications. With the introduction of this product we are unveiling
our strategy to address the entire solid state storage market with exceptional
controller devices."
In June
2009 -
SMART Modular
Technologies disclosed it had used
Marvell's SSD
controller in SMART's new
XceedIOPS
PCIe SSD which offers
upto 400GB capacity and 140,000 random IOPS performance.
In April 2011 -
Marvell unveiled a
PCIe compatible
SSD ASAP. Marvell
claims 10x speedups can be realized using its new
DragonFly
Virtual Storage Accelerator - which is designed to reduce
write amplification
to external storage arrays and acts as an OS agnostic multiprotocol storage
cache for NAS,
SAN or
DAS storage arrays.
The product - is expected to sample in Q3.
In January 2012 -
OCZ
announced is
now demonstrating at the Storage
Visions 2012 Conference new
PCIe SSDs - which use
SSD controllers
jointly developed with Marvell
(instead of - as in previous models - controllers from
SandForce).
In
March 2012 -
Marvell
announced
mass deployment of its new high speed 6Gbps SATA
SSD controller - the
88SS9187 which supports
regular RAM cache
(upto 1GB) and upto 500MB/s R/W even at dirty drive conditions. It supports
on-chip RAID technology
for the NAND device with flexible customer firmware based algorithms to optimize
retiring of
defective NAND block, plane, die or device and has the lowest power
consumption of any controller in this performance class.
In January 2013
Marvell
announced
it made a strategic investment in
Memoright.
In
April 2013
- Marvell entered the
Top SSD Companies list
- based on rankings in Q1
2013
In
February 2014
- Marvell
announced
it was sampling a new
eMMC
5.0 controller - the 88NV1088 - thereby enabling "SSD class"
performance (280MB/s read speed and 5K random IOPS) in a smartphone compatible
footprint. |
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| DIMM wars
at battery scale |
Editor:- May 12, 2016 - A recent blog -
How
Marvell FLC Redefines Main Memory - by Hunglin Hsu, VP
- Marvell
provides authoritative examples of the replacement ratios possible in a phone
design.
A strategic lesson to guide future designers is that even
while getting a 50% power consumption reduction (due to flash as RAM) it
is also feasible to increase application performance at the same time because
the software can work with a larger memory capacity (due to the lower
cost of flash
bytes). |
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| Among other things Hunglin says - "With FLC,
better performance can be achieved by reporting to the operating system a larger
than physically implemented main memory. The operating system is thus less
likely to kill background apps, which is why the fast app switching is possible.
The FLC hardware does all the heavy lifting in the background and frees up the
tasks of the operating system." ...read
the article | | |
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| Marvell samples controller
for SATAe SSDs |
Editor:- May 21, 2014 - If you're designing
SATA Express SSDs then Marvell
today
announced
it is sampling the 1st SSD
controller specifically designed for the SATAe market - which will
enable the design of 2.5"
PCIe SSDs at costs which could be
competitive with
fast SATA SSDs.
Marvell's
88SS1083 is a 2 lane PCIe Gen2 SSD controller with transfer rates up to
1GB/s. It supports DevSleep and L1.2 PCIe low power state - to minimize power
consumption in notebook
and enterprise array
environments. Its flash management scales down to 15nm NAND. | | |
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| Marvell samples 5K IOPS
eMMC SSD |
| Editor:- February 18, 2014 - Marvell today
announced
it is sampling a new
eMMC
5.0 controller - the 88NV1088 - which enables "SSD class"
performance (280MB/s read speed and 5K random IOPS) in a smartphone compatible
footprint. | | |
... |
| The phrases "adaptive
writes", "DSP IP in flash SSD", "LDPC codes" and "adaptive
flash cell care" have appeared in a lot of SSD news stories, interviews
and comments in recent years. What is it? Who does it? and why? |
| Adaptive flash
care management & DSP IP in SSDs | | | |
