Marvell expands its Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) solid-state drive (SSD) controller technology to support Host Memory Buffer (HMB), an NVMe revision 1.2 feature enabling DRAM-less SSDs to use host memory and achieve performance comparable to SSD designs with embedded DRAM but at much lower cost and power consumption. "The HMB feature greatly enhances system memory utilization, reduces total system cost, lowers power consumption and provides consumers with a new class of mobile computing devices," aid David Chen, Vice President of SSD Business at Marvell. .

Marvell's 88NV1140 is the first DRAM-less NVMe SSD controller for mass market mobile computing solutions with NANDEdge low-density parity check (LDPC) technology supporting triple-level cell (TLC) and 3D NAND. It enables small form factor SSD solutions with high performance for integration into low-z-height tablets, Chromebooks and new 2-in-1 hybrid/detachable mobile PC platforms. Additionally, Marvell's 88NV1140 has enabled the first hardware to support the new NVMe HMB feature. By leveraging memory allocated from the host system, the DRAM-less based 88NV1140 is able to scale up performance without limitations of conventional DRAM-less architectures.

Key features and benefits of Marvell's 88NV1140 include:

• Dual core Cortex R5 CPUs
• Embedded SRAM with hardware accelerators to optimize IOPS performance
• DRAM-less SSD through NVMe interface leverages HMB to scale up performance and reduce total BOM cost
• NANDEdge LDPC error-correction technology boosts SSD endurance and supports 15nm TLC and 3D NAND
• Low power management (L1.2) design
• 28nm low power CMOS process