ATP Electronics, the global leader in specialized storage and memory solutions, announced the launch of its new NVMe flash storage solutions with customizable thermal management. Using both hardware and firmware components, the thermal management solution prevents overheating while ensuring optimal sustained performance, particularly for NVMe solid state drives (SSDs) and modules that operate at blazing-fast speeds while installed in compact systems with little or no airflow.
Thermal NVMe SSD Offerings
The customizable ATP Thermal Management Solution includes copper foil and fin-type heatsink options for N600Si / N600Sc M.2 2280 modules with up to 3.84 TB and controller thermal pad for N600Si U.2 SSDs with up to 8 TB capacities. They are recommended for applications requiring stable and sustained read/write performance at high temperatures. Both come with advanced Power Loss Protection (PLP), Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) ECC algorithm, RAID engine support, and end-to-end data path protection.
ATP Thermal Management vs. Traditional Solution
Most SSDs are equipped with a thermal throttling mechanism, which cools the device by reducing the clock speed when a certain temperature is reached. Such mechanism, however, typically causes drastic performance drops, thus making it difficult to sustain the performance.
The ATP Thermal Management Solution combines firmware technologies and hardware options to meet customers’ unique thermal requirements for different use cases and scenarios, while ensuring optimal sustained performance even in extreme temperature shifts.
Close collaboration with the customers is a hallmark of the process. First, assessment of the system/mechanical and performance criteria is done. User applications and specifications such as temperature, airflow, mechanical design, workload requirements, and other relevant factors are carefully considered.
Since air flow may vary depending on the fan and drive location, simulation tests are performed using a proprietary ATP-built mini chamber to recreate as closely as possible the thermal environments based on customers’ profile. Necessary adjustments are then made to ensure the most optimal solution to meet the requirements.
The Thermal Management Solution is then customized based on the intensive assessment and simulation. The solution consists of these components:
- Adaptive Thermal Control through the ATP Thermal Throttling mechanism, which provides a delicate balance between performance and temperature instead of dramatic performance reduction.
- H/W Heatsink Solution. A variety of HW heatsink options (materials, dimensions, types) are available to match the mechanical constraints of each system design.
- Garbage Collection F/W Tuning. A periodic background refresh offsets the significant performance drop caused by the long garbage collection process.
By combining both hardware and firmware solutions, ATP NVMe SSDs with the customizable Thermal Management Solution delivers higher sustained write performance compared with standard thermal throttling, which causes performance to drop drastically.
For more information on ATP Thermal Management Solutions, visit:
https://www.atpinc.com/products/ssd-heatsink-for-M.2-NVMe
https://www.atpinc.com/products/u.2-nvme-ssd
