Nonvolatile memory access via memory interconnect systems

Abstract

A memory card, for use with a host system, combines both: (i) non-volatile memory express (NVMe) data storage such as a solid state drive (SSD) with (ii) dynamic random access memory (DRAM) conforming to the computer express link (CXL) protocol. The SSD and CXL DRAM share a common controller. CXL memory requests from the host system are handled according to the CXL.io protocol. NVMe data requests are wrapped into a CXL request packet. The common front end identifies the NVMe data request(s) within the CXL packet, parses the NVMe data request, and routes the request to the NVMe memory. A host operating system software driver intercepts the NVMe memory requests and wraps them into the CXL request packet.