I apologize if I’m in the wrong category, this is my first time posting here. I recently ordered a used PMC NV-1616 (part of the Flashtec NV1600 family, sometimes listed also as NVRAM 1616 EMC 16GB DDR MN TCA-00364-08-D) PCIe card that acts as a standard NVMe storage device, but uses DRAM modules as storage to give great performance (perhaps rivaling or exceeding Intel’s Optane), then backing up to onboard flash memory on shutdown.
Mine sadly doesn’t have the original supercapacitor backup power source, so there’s a high likelihood mine will be unformatted each time the system is restarted.
I was wondering if anyone knows where I could find documentation and CLI utilities for this device?
When PMC was acquired by Microsemi/Microchip, it seems downloads migrated to their website, but the pages and downloads mostly appear to have been taken down (I’m guessing since the product has been marked end of life). All I’ve found so far are basic datasheets.
Thank you so much for any guidance or help you can provide.
Interesting tech. PCIe gen3 x8, no apparent way to extend storage capacity.
You can easily find cards on eBay (~$95 w/capacitator, ~$50 w/o).
The spec sheet talks about the card offering an NVMe interface to the OS. So, the nvme cli utility (on Linux) should allow querying the card, formatting it, etc.
As you said, in 2024 it seems to compete with the last available 58GB Optane 1600X, which I would consider more practical (arguably more durable).
The card offers potentially better latency (tbd) and bandwidth (8x PCIe lanes vs. 2x) but ultimately has limited use cases due to the hard storage capacity limit.
What makes this card (for me) hard to recommend is the relatively strong resource requirements (8x PCIe slot) with seemingly niche benefits. I’d have the nagging question if I could use these (rare and valuable) PCIe lanes (slot) for something more useful?
That is a really good point, it definitely isn’t the most efficient use of PCIe resources to take up 8 lanes for only 16GB of fast storage. I hadn’t thought about that part.
Thank you! I’ll definitely give nvme-cli a try on it once it arrives. Hopefully I can find a way to access what it chooses to do with the 16GB of DRAM and 16GB of flash, or perhaps find a manual to see what modes are available. I can see on Archive.org that a manual and CLI tool definitely existed for these cards, but unfortunately none were saved.
I’ll definitely share the results once the card arrives. Thank you again!
So far I have found a few more resources on the NV1600 cards.
While searching the other models of this card (the 4GB NV1604 and 8GB NV1608), I came across a guide for updating the firmware for the NV1604 from a company called Avere (now owned by Microsoft) who used them in their FXT 5000 servers. In the manual it contained a working link to download the NV1604 firmware!
Sadly the tool used to install such firmware appears to have come already installed on the Avere servers, so not sure how useful the firmware is on its own. Also included in the documentation is the Avere FXT 5000 Series Field Service Guide, which shows the first record I’ve seen of any details on the operation of the NVRAM card. Below is a snapshot of the NVRAM page documenting the LED indicator behaviour for these NVRAM cards.
Lastly, I believe I’ve discovered what server the majority of these used cards were removed from. Most on eBay come with an extra adapter attached on the opposite side of the PCI slot cover labeled “HD Mini SAS To Internal SAS Adapter,” and the same sellers usually list at the same time an EMULEX LPE16304-M-E Fibre Channel card with an identical Mini SAS adapter on the PCI slot cover. That Fibre Channel card eventually lead me to the Dell/EMC XtremIO X2 server, which has both the NVRAM card and fibre channel card with the Mini SAS adapters on both brackets, as can be seen in pictures on this article: DellEMC XtremIO X2 – Part 2, The Hardware & Improved Data Reduction - Itzikr's Blog
Sadly all the XtremIO X2 downloads from Dell are locked behind having an account with access to those specific downloads, but perhaps a step in the right direction towards finding resources/tools for these NVRAM drives.
If anyone might have access to the tools for managing the NVRAM drives on either the Avere FXT 5000 or XtremIO X2 servers, I would greatly appreciate your help. Thank you again.
