One of our product lines that has been very well received over the years is our line of MG Backplane Controllers, used for enclosure management functions and I/O control and monitoring tasks in a wide range of server and storage system designs. AMI controllers have evolved over the years to incorporate new features and standards, becoming more efficient and smaller as we adopt new chip footprints and pin counts.

Our OEM and ODM customers find our backplane controllers extremely useful because they offer a large amount of functionality and features off the shelf, with little programming or customization required to be added into a design. Their utility also makes them a great starting or reference point for customers looking to customize a unique solution based on the standard, off-the-shelf AMI design. For many years, AMI has offered a wide choice of reference designs and development tools for its backplane controller lineup, along with development boards to speed integration in specific OEM designs.

In today’s Tech Blog post, we will focus on our latest addition to this highly successful family of products, the MG9098 Backplane Controller, talking briefly about how its new and unique features change the game. Launched in April of 2017, the MG9098 is a low-cost, QFM-64 single-chip solution for enclosure management of new generation NVM Express® SSD backplanes. Notably, it supports NVMe in addition to traditional SAS and SATA backplanes as well, with no custom firmware or programming required – the first chip in the AMI family to do so.

For readers not familiar with it, NVM Express (Non-Volatile Memory Express, or nVME™) is an open collection of standards and information maintained by the industry standards group of the same name, consisting of many of the leading manufacturers of server and storage equipment in the industry today. Its mission, as described on its website, is to “fully expose the benefits of non-volatile memory in all types of computing environments from mobile to data center. NVMe is designed from the ground up to deliver high bandwidth and low latency storage access for current and future NVMe technologies.”

A single MG9098 controller can support a combination of eight SATA, SAS or NVMe drives simultaneously, with support for up to 32 drives by cascading together four MG9098 controllers. With these capabilities, the MG9098 enables the world’s leading enterprise system builders and data center solution providers to design low-cost, space-efficient backplane solutions for NVMe, SAS and SATA-based storage subsystems.

Because the MG9098 is a single-chip solution, like all our MG Backplane Controllers, it allows manufacturers to reduce components and chip count in their designs for more efficient use of space and lower material cost. This type of thoughtful design underscores our constant drive to enable our OEM and ODM customers to deliver powerful and affordable products that consistently meet the performance and price requirements of cloud, data center and similar high-performance computing environments.

For more information about the MG9098 Backplane Controller, please see the press release announcing the product launch here: ami.com/ami-announces-mg9098-backplane-controller-first-single-chip-solution-for-nvme-sata-and-sas-drives/.

Product information, including data sheets, can be found here: ami.com/bpc.

Thanks for reading today’s Tech Blog! Do you have any experience using AMI backplane controllers or any questions about them? Feel free to drop us a line via social media or our Contact Us form and let us know – and what you might like to see in future posts!

NVM Express® and NVMe™ are registered trademarks and trademarks of NVM Express, Inc., respectively.