Flash Memory Summit: NVMe 1.3 and NVMe-MI Verification IP Updates by Avery Design Systems

Avery Design Systems Inc. announced availability of updates to its NVMe VIP supporting NVMe 1.3 and support for NVMe-Management Interface (NVMe-MI) over PCIe 4.0 or SMBus 3.0.

The NVMe VIP supports the NVMe 1.3 standard including enhancements to models, protocol checking, and compliance test suites.

NVMe 1.3 mandatory features and revisions:

• Identify namespace return list of namespace identifiers

• Get log page command change for retain asynchronous event functionality

• Globally unique updates

• SGL Dword simplification

• Firmware update granularity

• Namespace optimal IO boundary

• Non-operational power state permissive mode

• Data transfer direction for opcodes shall be valid

• Reservations changes

• Operation denied status code

• Deallocated value for logical block data

NVMe 1.3 optional features:

• Device self-test

• Sanitize

• Directives

• Boot partitions

• Telemetry

• Virtualization enhancements

• NVMe-MI management enhancements

• Host controlled thermal management

• Timestamp

• Emulated controller performance enhancement

The NVMe host driver supports the NVMe Management Interface (NVMe-MI) to communicate out-of-band with an NVMe NVM Subsystem Management Endpoint via PCIe or SMBus/I2C over a simplified MCTP protocol. NVMe-MI supports a native PCIe in-line flow or SMBus adapter for out-of-bound communication via a SMBus 3.0 host model.

• Discover devices that are present and learn capabilities of each device

• Store data about the host environment enabling a management controller to query the data later

• Health and temperature monitoring

• Multiple command slots to prevent a long latency command from blocking monitoring operations

• Processor and OS agnostic

• A standard format for VPD and defined mechanisms to R/W VPD contents

• Preserves data at rest security

“Avery continues to demonstrate leadership in NVMe and PCIe VIP with support for the latest NVMe features,” said Chris Browy, VP, sales and marketing, Avery. “Our customers can develop new products more confidently and quickly knowing a comprehensive SystemVerilog/UVM NVMe verification environment is available for the latest in NVMe developments targeting enterprise, client, and cloud.“