International Journal of Computer
Trends and Technology

Research Article | Open Access | Download PDF

Volume 73 | Issue 7 | Year 2025 | Article Id. IJCTT-V73I7P107 | DOI : https://doi.org/10.14445/22490183/IJCTT-V73I7P107

Design Verification Best Practices for PCIe Gen4 and Gen5 NVMe SSDs

Ritesh Deshmukh

Received Revised Accepted Published
01 Jun 2025 24 Jun 2025 16 Jul 2025 29 Jul 2025

Citation :

Ritesh Deshmukh, "Design Verification Best Practices for PCIe Gen4 and Gen5 NVMe SSDs," International Journal of Computer Trends and Technology (IJCTT), vol. 73, no. 7, pp. 55-62, 2025. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/22490183/IJCTT-V73I7P107

Abstract

The shift of NVMe SSD architectures from PCIe Gen3 to Gen5 with data rates of up to 32GT/s brings enormous verification challenges requiring advanced validation techniques. While progress has been reported in coverage-driven verification and assertion-based verification, a holistic framework for protocol behavior, signal integrity, and security at Gen5 speeds remains elusive. This paper reviews best practices for Gen4/Gen5 NVMe SSD verification, such as protocol conformance, signal integrity analysis, controller-level validation, and firmware security testing. End-to-end integration frameworks and realtime trace capability are lacking. The study encompasses UVM testbenches, emulation-based acceleration, coverage-driven verification, and assertion-based verification in 19 technical papers (2021–2025). Findings show emulation-based methods achieve 10× throughout improvement over simulation, but are limited by concurrent load testing and security-performance integration. Overall, no general verification model yet offers end-to-end coverage of concurrent load conditions in Gen5 SSDs.

Keywords

PCIe Gen5, NVMe, Design Verification, UVM, Signal Integrity.

References

 [1] Jeongbae Seo et al., “Enhancement of Emulation Usage for NVMe Solid State Drive,” International SoC Design Conference, Gangneung si, Korea, pp. 382-383, 2022.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[2] Yunhui Qiu, Wenbo Yin, and Lingli Wang, “A High-Performance and Scalable NVMe Controller Featuring Hardware Acceleration,” IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 1344-1357, 2022.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[3] Hong Fei Qui, Zhiqin Huang, and Pengcheng Jiang, “Research and Testing on Enterprise NVMe SSD Reliability Technology,” Proceedings Third International Conference on Green Communication, Network, and Internet of Things, vol. 12814, 2023.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[4] Md Hafizul Islam Chowdhury et al., “D-Shield: Enabling Processor-Side Encryption and Integrity Verification for Secure NVMe Drives,” IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture, Montreal, QC, Canada, pp. 908-921, 2023.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[5] Sangmin Kim et al., “System-Level Power Estimation of SSDs Under Real Workloads Using Emulation,” Proceedings of Design & Verification Conference, pp. 1-4, 2023.
[Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[6] Zunian Xuan et al., “Design of NVMe SSD Realtime High Speed Storage System Based on Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC,” Proceedings of the 2023 12th International Conference on Computing and Pattern Recognition, pp. 569-575, 2023.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[7] Ruiming Lu et al., “NVMe SSD Failures in the Field: The Fail-Stop and the Fail-Slow,” Proceedings USENIX Annual Technical Conference, pp. 1005-1020, 2022.
[Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[8] Yu Zou, Amro Awad, and Mingjie Lin, “DirectNVM: Hardware-Accelerated NVMe SSDs for High-Performance Embedded Computing,” ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 1-24, 2022.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[9] Sewoog Kim, Heekwon Park, and Jongmoo Choi, “Direct-Virtio: A New Direct Virtualized I/O Framework for NVMe SSDs,” Electronics, vol. 10, no. 17, pp. 1-12, 2021.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link] 
[10] Bishwapa Sanyal, and Namita Palecha, “Verification of Firmware Controlled NVMe Host,” International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 3974-3979, 2021.
[Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[11] Sang-Hoon Kim et al., “NVMeVirt: A Versatile Software-Defined Virtual NVMe Device,” Proceedings of 21st USENIX Conference File Storage Technology, pp. 379-394, 2023.
[Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[12] Mahdi Siamaki, and Bardia Safaei, “Unleashing the Power of NVMe in Cloud: A Complete Software-Defined Emulation Study,” IEEE Access, vol. 13, pp. 32831-32858, 2025.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[13] Yuqi Zhang et al., “MSFRD: Mutation Similarity Based SSD Failure Rating and Diagnosis for Complex and Volatile Production Environments,” Proceedings of USENIX Annual Technical Conference, pp. 869-884, 2024.
[Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[14] Yiquan Chen et al., “BM-Store: A Transparent and High-Performance Local Storage Architecture for Bare-Metal Clouds Enabling Large Scale Deployment,” IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture, Montreal, QC, Canada, pp. 1031-1044, 2023.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[15] Jiexiong Xu et al., “LightPool: An NVMe-oF-Based High-Performance and Lightweight Storage Pool Architecture for Cloud-Native Distributed Databases,” IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, pp. 983-995, 2024.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[16] Jiexiong Xu et al., “Performance Characterization of SmartNIC NVMe-over-Fabrics Target Offloading,” Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference, pp. 14-24, 2024.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[17] Krijn Doekemeijer et al., “Performance Characterization of NVMe Flash Devices with Zoned Namespaces,” IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing, Santa Fe, NM, USA, pp. 118-131, 2023.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[18] Vanja Luković et al., “Solid-State Drive Failure Prediction Using Anomaly Detection,” Electronics, vol. 14, no. 7, pp. 1-16, 2025.
[CrossRef] [Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]
[19] Hao Chen et al., “SpanDB: A Fast, Cost-Effective LSM-Tree Based KV Store on Hybrid Storage,” Proceedings of 19th USENIX Conference File Storage Technology, pp. 55-70, 2021.
[Google Scholar] [Publisher Link]