Paper Title: Using PCIe Fabric Switches in an NVMe-Based Storage System

Paper Abstract: PCIe fabric switching is an obvious way to extend NVMe beyond a single computer. However, the PCIe interface has a distance limitation of just a few meters, limiting it to solutions within a rack. How can we handle longer distances? One approach is to integrate smart NICs within a PCIe fabric switch. Clients could then access NVMe SSDs installed in the PCIe switch via NVMe-oF. The smart NICs are connected to the host ports of the PCIe switch. NVMe SSDs are then assigned to the smart NICs. Using NVMe-oF, external clients could reach the NVMe SSDs with low latency and high performance. Furthermore, the NVMe SSDs could even be moved dynamically to different NICs depending on the requirements for bandwidth and capacity. No rebooting of either the switch or client hosts would be needed, providing flexibiiity that a simple fan-out storage box could not offer. The PCIe switch could thus serve both direct attached and remote connected clients, allowing them both to enjoy the high throughput and low latency that NVMe devices offer.

Paper Author: Brian Pan, General Manager, H3 Platform

Author Bio: Brian Pan is the founder/General Manager of H3 Platform, a leading cloud solution provider offering PCIe composable technology to cloud operators. H3 Platform’s customers include a tier 1 AI research laboratory in North America, the provider of the car hiring solution, and Tier 1 server vendors. Brian focuses on developing high-performance computing (HPC) applications that maximize the utilization of accelerators, interconnect, and storage. Before founding H3 Platform, Brian was Sales Director at Oracle Taiwan, ZyXEL, and QNAP. He earned a BSME degree from the National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan) and an MBA from the National Chengchi University (Taiwan).