Shulou(Shulou.com)06/01 Report--

As we all know, PMC used to be a product provider specializing in the field of communications, with profound technology and customer accumulation in high-speed interface chips and switching chips. Telecom equipment manufacturers such as Huawei are very close partners of PMC, and most of PMC's business revenue in the communications field also comes from China.

Under the trend of ICT convergence, telecom equipment manufacturers have also begun to move to the field of IT. Taking into account the needs of customers and the needs of their own development, PMC has also entered the IT field through continuous acquisitions. Especially after the acquisition of Adaptec's memory card product line, PMC has more opportunities to show its talents in the storage field. ZakiHassan, director of product marketing of PMC's enterprise storage product division, told reporters that just a few months ago, PMC had just acquired IDT's enterprise flash controller division, giving PMC the ability to provide PCIe flash control chips. PMC has been intensive in storage for eight years since it got involved in the storage business in 2005, and 65 per cent of its revenue now comes from storage.

On September 5th, PMC took the lead in launching the Adaptec8 series 12Gb/sSASRAID array cards for high-performance servers and network storage. Take the opportunity of ZakiHassan to attend the new product press conference, our reporter has an exclusive interview with ZakiHassan.

Keep up with data center change

With the wave of cloud computing and big data, integration has become the trend of the times. ZakiHassan believes that convergence is an opportunity for PMC: "We can provide customers with cross-platform IP solutions that can not only help customers reduce R & D costs, but also reduce investment risks. In addition, our design team can flexibly reorganize key elements such as storage interface, PCIe bus and embedded chip memory according to customer needs."

At present, the hottest topic in the industry is Software defined data Center (SDDC). As a traditional hardware manufacturer, how will PMC deal with the change of "software definition"? ZakiHassan first acknowledged that the integration of architecture and software definition is the future direction, but he also said that no matter how widely used the software is, it is based on hardware, but the location of the hardware has changed. PMC focuses on how to make the hardware better support the software, and continue to promote the evolution and innovation of technology in the aspect that the hardware can give full play to its efficiency. In addition, PMC already has a longer-term plan for software-defined storage.

ZakiHassan also talked about the challenges brought about by the changes in the data center, such as virtualization, high density, low energy consumption and converged architecture. "from the beginning of our involvement in storage, we have been very concerned about the development and needs of the data center." ZakiHassan said, for example, "the data center is short of space and needs to connect more disks in limited space and reduce energy consumption. To meet this demand, we have launched a high-density RoC chip solution that can provide 16 ports and 24 ports on a card, while most competitors can only provide 4 ports and 8 ports due to technical limitations. We now have a dedicated team to serve data center customers in China. We will provide suitable products according to the specific needs of users. "

In terms of virtualization, PMC's Adaptec8 series array cards are equipped with maxCachePlus software that allows customers to virtualize storage devices throughout the server environment, including storage devices directly connected to the array cards, memory connected to the server CPU and storage devices connected to the PCIe flash card. In addition, maxCachePlus can virtualize external storage by counting and automatically adapting application loads, and support future FDIO architectures (separate Icano architecture based on fabric).

ZakiHassan believes that ensuring low energy consumption in a high-density environment is critical for users. In this regard, PMC has made many useful attempts, such as its 16-port directly connected array cards reduce the number of internal components, thus reducing energy consumption. Many Internet companies, including Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba and other Internet companies have fully affirmed the simplicity of 16-port array cards. The fourth generation cache backup and super capacitor introduced by PMC further reduce the size of the capacitor and even embed the cache-protected daughter card into the array card, which is more beneficial to heat dissipation.

In terms of converged architecture, PMC is developing a more advanced FDIO architecture that enables storage sharing based on unified connectivity. ZakiHassan said that this technology is particularly suitable for the integrated architecture of storage and network in the data center.

According to the different needs of Internet enterprise data center and traditional enterprise data center, PMC has also introduced different solutions: Internet enterprise data center is more about price-to-price ratio, efficiency and maintainability, so PMC will provide customized solutions, especially at the software level, mainly in terms of performance adjustment, monitoring and maintenance interfaces, and cooperate with major ODM and OEM vendors Traditional enterprise data centers pay more attention to function, reliability and ease of use, so PMC provides Adaptec series cards as well as maxCachePlus, HybridRAID, FlexConfiguration and other functions.

Gradual evolution of 12Gb/sSAS

From 3Gb/s to 6Gb/s and then to the newly launched Adaptec8 series 12Gb/sSASRAID array cards, on the surface, this is a normal product upgrade, in addition, what are the advantages of Adaptec8 series array cards?

ZakiHassan said that the biggest bright spot of Adaptec8 series array cards is not on 12Gb/sSAS, because the industrial chain of 12Gb/sSAS products is gradually taking shape. The Adaptec8 series array card is a new generation solution launched by PMC after communicating with the world's mainstream data center vendors. It can help data center customers gradually upgrade to the next generation architecture on the basis of more fully releasing the high performance of their existing architecture. " The Adaptec8 series array cards provide higher storage density, connectivity, and can work closely with SSD to replace the previously expensive SSD solution while ensuring high performance. At the IDF conference held not long ago in San Francisco, the Adaptec8 series array cards had an IOPS value of more than 700000 in performance tests, making it the fastest raid card in the industry. " ZakiHassan said.

Users usually do not like revolution and prefer smooth evolution. So what should users pay attention to during the transition from the current 6Gb/sSAS scheme to the 12Gb/sSAS scheme? ZakiHassan said: "the maturity of the 12Gb/sSAS product chain is likely to wait until the second half of 2014 or even the first half of 2015." As an upstream manufacturer, PMC usually leaves 2-3 years ahead of the entire industry. On the one hand, PMC will actively promote the upgrading of the entire industry to 12Gb/sSAS; on the other hand, PMC also recognizes the gradual evolution model to help users better protect their original investment while adopting new technologies. ZakiHassan said, for example, the Adaptec8 series array cards are compatible with the existing 6Gb/sSAS architecture, and can better stimulate the performance of the 6Gb/sSAS interface SSD, while equipped with more high-end software to deploy SSD resources. Adaptec8 series array cards will be officially available in November this year, and many mainstream OEM manufacturers in the industry have tested this card and expressed their satisfaction.

Support SSD to catch up from behind

One of the features of Adaptec8 series array cards is that they can be configured as raid cards as well as support SSD. In practical applications, users can configure flexibly according to different application scenarios. For example, the system boot disk is generally protected by RAID1 image, but in more traditional database application scenarios, in order to ensure the overall performance of the system when using a large number of mechanical hard disks, users will also choose RAID5 or RAID10 to improve performance while ensuring fault tolerance. In the case of heavy use of SSD, users can set the data disk to pass-through mode to maximize the performance of SSD, and the Adaptec8 series array cards can be configured in HBA or simple volume mode. In practical applications, the mixed mode of mechanical hard disk and SSD will be more common, and maxCachePlus can be used for layered acceleration. ZakiHassan concluded that the Adaptec8 series array cards can be configured in three modes: RAID, simple volume and HBA mode, which greatly simplifies the user's hardware management.

Compared with the competitors who first entered the SSD market, PMC entered the SSD market a little later. How does PMC tap its backwardness advantage? ZakiHassan said that in fact, PMC released the industry's first 12Gb/sSASSSD controller early last year, and the development of this product can be traced back to two years ago. PMC has invested in the SSD field for a long time and has strengthened its support for PCIeSSD through the acquisition of IDT. In addition, it has launched the world's first flash memory chip that supports the NVMe standard. Therefore, PMC occupies a leading position in the SAS interface and SSD products of the PCIe standard.

In terms of PCIeSSD, one end of PMC's PCIe controller is connected to PCIe, and the other end can be directly connected to flash memory without any conversion, so there is no bottleneck or loss to achieve higher throughput. On the other hand, the products of competitors will have the process of transforming internal SATA to PCIe, which will produce certain wear and tear. "there are still many variables in the SSD market," ZakiHassan added. PMC believes that compliance with SAS and PCIe standards is the direction of development. SAS standard is more suitable for the manufacture of 2.5-inch SSD disks, while PCIe standard is more suitable for the design of boards. But no matter which specification of the product, PMC has obvious technical advantages. "

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