The Broadcom P411W-32P is the industry’s first fully managed Gen 4 NVMe switch adapter, providing enterprise class options for NVMe solid state drive (SSD) attach requirements. The P411W-32P leverages Broadcom’s world-class board design, PEX88048 PCIe Gen 4 switch chip, and solid firmware expertise, to provide advanced features not available using traditional NVMe drive attach methods. Similar to Broadcom HBAs, the P411W-32P adapter is supplied with fully validated and supported firmware and standards based out of band manageability features.

The P411W-32P switch adapter delivers several innovative features, including true surprise add and removal, Downstream Port Containment and Read Tracking, which can help the users avoid typical situations that could cause a kernel panic. The integrated management processor delivers added features, such as SES compatible LED control and BMC support.

The P411W-32P enables support for Surprise Drive Add and Remove using standard system BIOS and OS software. The adapter enables allocation of empty drive slots for future drive addition by:

• Creating synthetic hierarchy to isolate host from physical PCIe topology changes and errors
  
• Creating “Placeholder Endpoints” for any empty slots where a NVMe endpoint device could be later installed to the system
  
• Delivering information required to map PCIe Device IDs back into PCIe system memory, which fools the system into thinking all slots are populated. This occurs as a result of the host enumerating the PCIe topology and querying the P411W-32P. The host will then allocate memory locations for the empty slots.
  
• Managing the process when a physical device is inserted, to take care of all the required protocol handshakes and replace the placeholder endpoint with the actual information of the device. This saves the system from going through another round of enumeration and allows for the new device to be used in a graceful manner.