LSI samples its SAS3 RAID-on-Chip ICO
2009-12-16
CHIPMAKER LSI is sampling its LSISAS2208 dual-core 6Gbps SAS3 RAID-on-Chip (ROC) I/O controller to its customers. Today the firm said that its high-performance LSI SAS ROC is intended to support the forthcoming PCI Express 3.0 specification, which is currently under development by the PCI-CIG. It added that the new dual-core ROC is designed to deliver 600,000 I/Os per second, let users take full advantage of solid-state drives, and includes the latest PCI Express and SAS technologies. In particular, it added, it will improve SSD performance when running Microsoft Exchange Server, database, web serving and business intelligence applications. "From server generation to server generation, leading OEMs have relied on the LSI SAS portfolio to meet their storage demands," said Bill Wuertz, senior vice president and general manager of the storage components division at LSI. "As the industry now begins to look towards the PCI Express 3.0 wave of server platforms, the new LSISAS2208 ROC will enable OEMs to take advantage of the performance capabilities offered by the new specification, once again demonstrating LSI's ability to help keep our customers at the forefront of industry inflection points." "Performance is becoming more critical in today's enterprise environments, especially as more enterprise-class solid-state drives are deployed," added Jeff Janukowicz, research manager, hard disk drive components and solid state drives - and business card title spacing nightmare - at analysts IDC. "Devices such as the next-generation LSI ROC, coupled with PCI Express 3.0-based server platforms, are designed to maximise the performance benefits of flash storage." The LSISAS2208 ROC integrates a 72-bit DDR3-1333 SDRAM interface, specialised hardware acceleration engines and a high-performance dual-core 800 MHz PowerPC processor for optimised RAID performance.