Alibaba Readies PCIe 5.0 SSD Controller Based on RISC-V ISA

[AleksandarK]

Alibaba's T-Head unit, responsible for the design and development of in-house IC design, has announced the first domestic SSD controller based on the PCIe 5.0 specification standard. Called the Zhenyue 510, the SSD controller is aimed at enterprise SSD offerings. Interestingly, the Zhenyue 510 is powered by T-Head's custom Xuantie C910 cores based on RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). Supporting the PCIe 5.0 standard for interfacing, the SSD controller uses DDR5 memory as a cache buffer. Regarding the performance, there are no official figures yet, but the company claims to have 30% lower input/output latencies compared to competing offerings. T-Head claims the SSD has an IO processing capability of "3400 Kilo IOs per second, a data bandwidth of 14 Gbytes/s, and an extremely high energy efficiency of 420 Kilo IO per second for every Watt".

This is an essential step towards Chinese self-sufficiency as T-Head has designed various ICs for processing different tasks. Still, now Alibaba's chip design unit has a domestic design for storage as well. Claiming low latency figures, the Zhenyue 510 is suitable for enterprise workloads like big data analysis, as well as AI inference/training systems workloads. The development of Zhenyue 510 started in 1H 2021, and it took the company more than two years to complete the design and validation of the chip to prepare it for deployment. This is the second Chinese-made SSD controller after Yingren Technology (InnoGrit) announced their chip in September.



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[TumbleGeorge]

extremely high energy efficiency of 420 Kilo IO per second for every Watt".

What is those numbers for non chinese PCIe 5.0 controllers?

 

[AleksandarK]

What is those numbers for non chinese PCIe 5.0 controllers?

I don’t know, hence the quote from their website. I don’t think these numbers mean much…

 

[bonehead123]

Good, let them become "self-sufficient" asap, then maybe they will stop stealing/copying western/EU company's tech

 

[gurusmi]

Good, let them become "self-sufficient" asap, then maybe they will stop stealing/copying western/EU company's tech

And what about you dream at night?

Edit:
In their believing this is a intellectual property owned by everybody. That is a basement of their political system. So the result of theat thoughts. If one things is owned by everybody how can it be stolen?

 

[chodaboy19]

How long before the US government tries to ban RISC as well?

 

[R-T-B]

And what about you dream at night?

Edit:
In their believing this is a intellectual property owned by everybody. That is a basement of their political system. So the result of theat thoughts. If one things is owned by everybody how can it be stolen?

That'd make sense if they did not have their own patent office:

China National Intellectual Property Administration

english.cnipa.gov.cn

Mainland China plays the communist fiddle but is really as capitalist as America and as authoritarian as Nazi Germany. Then they are suddenly communist when the government needs something. It's kind of the worst of all worlds.

How long before the US government tries to ban RISC as well?

Won't happen. A lot of western tech uses RISC(-V) as well.

 

[Minus Infinity]

How long before the US government tries to ban RISC as well?

It's open source, so good luck with that.