LSI Samples 6Gbps SAS RAID-on-Chip IC for Next-gen PCI Express 3.0 Server Platforms

(Business News & Technology News, 23 Dec 2009)

LSI Corp. is sampling the LSISAS2208 dual-core 6Gbps SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) IC to OEM customers. The device is intended to support the forthcoming PCI Express 3.0 specification, currently under development within the PCI-SIG, and provide I/O performance levels that meet the needs of next-generation server platforms based on PCI Express 3.0 and flash-based solid-state drive (SSD) storage.

The draft PCI Express 3.0 specification will extend PCI Express data rates up to 8.0 GigaTransfers per second per lane, doubling the host bandwidth that was achievable with previous generations. Integrating the latest enhancements in PCI Express and SAS technology, the third-generation LSI SAS ROC will deliver performance levels of up to 600,000 input-output operations per second (IOPS), allowing server platforms to take full advantage of the performance benefit of SSDs for applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, databases, Web serving and business intelligence.

The LSISAS2208 ROC integrates a 72-bit DDR3-1333 SDRAM interface, specialized hardware acceleration engines and a high-performance dual-core 800MHz PowerPC processor for optimized RAID performance. In addition, the LSISAS2208 ROC incorporates enhancements such as single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) for greater performance in virtualized environments, improved system performance and data security, and more finely-tuned quality of service (QoS).

LSI