NVDIMMs Compatible on Supermicro Server Board 

SMART Modular Technologies, Inc. announced that its DDR3 Non-Volatile DIMMs (NVDIMMs) are now fully compatible on a Supermicro X9DRH-iF-NV server board. The combination of this Supermicro server board and SMART's NVDIMMs provide Supermicro server board customers an off-the-shelf non-volatile "DRAM-speed" storage solution.

Supermicro's server board is configured with two Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors, Intel ADR (Asynchronous DRAM Refresh) chipset, and 16 DIMM sockets. The server board BIOS detects NVDIMMs and automatically enables non-volatile operation of the module. To guarantee critical data is persistent, the application must ensure that this data has been written from the CPU cache to the NVDIMM DRAM memory or that the critical data is stored in ADR-protected memory prior to any backup operation.

In the event of a power failure or other fault condition, contents of SMART's NVDIMM DRAM are backed-up to on-board flash memory, and then made available again after the fault is cleared or power is restored. This process is carried out by utilizing SMART's proprietary SafeStor engine which initiates backup and restore operations upon command from the host controller. The SafeStor engine employs multi-channel fast NAND and high-speed switching circuitry to provide a leading-edge backup and restore capability at 10s/GB, while still functioning as a standard DDR3 RDIMM at speeds up to 1600MHz during normal operation.

While in a power failure backup mode, temporary power is provided to the NVDIMM by a supercap module. SMART offers multiple supercap module form factors including PCIe, SSD, and BBU (battery-backed unit). This configuration enables write acceleration applications to bypass slower write times to secondary storage solutions such as PCIe flash-based storage devices, SSDs, and HDDs. At power-on, if a backup image exists on an NVDIMM the BIOS will automatically restore the contents of the NVDIMM from backup and re-arms the module to be non-volatile for another fault condition or power failure.