eNova Opal2 to MX+ controller
July 2016 – In a briefing with eNova CEO and founding engineer Robert Wann, we had a chance to hear about their new XWall MX+ disk controller. eNova, which has been in the disk controller business for over 16 years in the Asia market. The new MX+ is the latest generation of their fully integrated controller SOC.
The new chip supports full data rate 6Gbps SATA 3, while also conforming to the full TCG Opal 2.0 SED drive standard. The firmware also supports IEEE 1667. This is managed through the implementation of an on-chip AES security engine and on-chip firmware that manages the connection of both SEDs and non-SED devices to the same controller chip. The AES engine can provide full XTS/CBC/ECB 256-bit crypto performance. This system ensures a secure erase of the data on the drive in under 1ms, as the encryption keys are held in the controller.
eNova XWall MX+ Secure Drive Controller
The chip supports all drive types – rotating media and flash on the same controller. This, in the combination with the mixed SED/FED/standard drive capability, allows the controller to be used in legacy environments where migration to SEDs and new higher throughput/reduced access time tiers with Flash are being used.
The controller is unique in that it has built in support for Microsoft eDrives. An eDrive can be configured internally as a Boot Drive or a Data Drive. The eDrive can also be configured as a USB3.0/3.1-to-SATA portable drive. The software virtualization of the eDrive constitutes three major functions: (A) Transparent Hardware Full Disk Encryption or Self Encrypting Drive, (B) TCG Opal 2.0 Firmware and (C) IEEE 1667 Firmware. With these three functions in place the SED/Opal 2.0 issues are managed with several enhancements through the Microsoft BitLocker (MBAM) and the 1667 & Opal 2.0 interfaces.
The chip can be used at the drive level, plug-in board or directly on the motherboard for the designs. The chip uses standard RSA public keypairs so it is compatible with existing applications. This conformance and multi-placement applicability, allows the chip to be a strong replacement for existing embedded machine applications with data storage needs that are transitioning to smaller footprint connected IoT designs. These newer designs will probably use Flash memory for reduced power and size. The existing designs most likely have rotating media for storage. The XWall MX+ controller allows for updating the design to both Flash and encryption at full data rate, and supporting the legacy systems in a single part.
