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HighPoint NVMe Switch AIC & Adapter Powered By Broadcom MPT & Native OS Drivers
HighPoint’s NVMe Switch Series PCIe AICs and Adapters leverage Broadcom’s industry leading PCIe switch technology to deliver unmatched storage performance and reliability. Designed to satisfy today’s most data-intensive applications, our Gen5 and Gen4 NVMe switch solution have been engineered to ensure each hosted NVMe SSDs delivers maximum transfer throughput in even the most challenging workloads and provide native NVMe connectivity for mainstream Linux and Windows based operating systems .
One of the key factors behind the Switch Series’s impressive performance capabilities is Broadcom’s MPT driver. Natively supported by Windows and Linux based operating system, the MPT Driver manages I/O requests between the PCIe Switch Chipset and NVMe storage devices. The following article explores how the MPT driver interacts with the host OS’s native NVMe drivers to maximize data transfer throughput.
Native OS Compatibility for Seamless Integration
Native support streamlines service and maintenance sessions as support for the hardware is already embedded directly into the OS itself.
HighPoint NVMe Switch solutions utilize two device drivers; Broadcom’s MPT driver, and the native NVMe drivers. Both drivers have been incorporated into all mainstream Windows and Linux operating systems. As such, HighPoint Switch series AICs and Adapters will be automatically recognized by these platforms; no additional software is required. Likewise, any SSD hosted by the AIC or Adapter will be recognized as an ordinary, physical drive by the operating system.
Communication Breakdown – how the NVMe Device Drivers work
As previously discussed, HighPoint NVMe Switch Solutions leverage two distinct drivers – the Broadcom MPT driver, and the native NVMe drivers provided by the OS.
Broadcom’s MPT driver manages communication between the PCIe Switch chipset and the host system. The Native NVMe driver handles direct interaction with the NVMe storage devices (the SSDs). These two drivers interact seamlessly with another, and facilitate low-latency, highly efficient data transfer; ideal for a wide range of demanding applications including AI and ML workloads, high-speed data ingestion and processing, and large-scale storage systems such as an enterprise server or Edge Data Center.
An overview of how these drivers interact is outlined below:
1. NVMe Device to Broadcom MPT Driver: The NVMe device (SSD) communicates with the PCIe Switch chipset, which forwards the requests to the Broadcom MPT Driver.
2. MPT Driver to Native NVMe Driver: The MPT driver routes the request to the native NVMe driver, which interacts directly with the NVMe device.
3. Native NVMe Driver to Operating System: The Native NVMe driver processes the read/write requests to the NVMe media, translating them for the OS's storage subsystem.
4. Response Flow: The process reverses, with the OS sending the response back through the native NVMe driver, MPT driver, and PCIe switch to the NVMe device.
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HighPoint’s Industry-Proven PCIe Switching Architecture
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