From SANBlaze, VDM Support for SBExpress NVMe Gen 4 Test Systems

SANBlaze Technology, Inc. announced VDM Support for the SBExpress line of NVMe Gen 4 test systems.

SBExpress-DT NVMe SSD Drive Test System

The ability to test Management Interface (MI) commands over the PCIe Vendor Defined Message Physical Layer (VDM) using Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP) over PCIe Binding completes their NVMe MI transport test suite adding to the existing SMBus and In-Band support.

The NVMe-MI spec defines an architecture and command set for out-of-band and in-band management of an NVMe storage device. The protocol can be exchanged on the physical layer SMBus allowing MI functionality completely out of band from PCIe, and also via PCIe Vendor Defined Messaging (VDM) and PCIe in-band via NVMe send and receive. The company offers support for all transport mechanisms rounding out a test system for NVMe-MI and making the SBExpress-RM4 and SBExpress-DT4 a platform for verification of NVMe-MI.

NVMe-MI supports all key capabilities for NVMe storage devices:

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

• Storage device health and temperature monitoring

• Use of the out-of-band mechanism is host processor and OS agnostic

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

• Ability to download and activate device firmware over SMBus-MI, PCIe VDM-MI, and NVMe InBand over PCIe

“We’re very excited to be able to offer a VDM PCIe transport for NVMe-MI to our Gen 4 NVMe customers,” said Vince Asbridge, founder and president. “It’s a test case that used to require complicated and expensive configurations that are difficult to assemble, maintain, and use. Our VDM implementation using our SBExpress CLI, Python API, and ‘Certified by SANBlaze’ automated testing provides a simple-to-use and comprehensive test suite our customers can deploy and use on day one.”

The company has bundled a VDM hardware module with a simple-to-use MI packet generator that allows engineers to build custom test scenarios or run any combination of built-in Certified by SANBlaze MI tests.

Resource:
Description of the VDM capabilities

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