Marvell 88RC13xx Performance RAID Controllers With Eight 6Gb SATA Ports

Marvell Technology Group Ltd. announced the 88RC13xx family of high-performance RAID storage controllers with a set of features that include eight 6Gb SATA ports, four lanes of PCIe 3.0, and a 10Gb/s USB 3.1 device port with Type-C connector support.

The product line consists of a performance AHCI RAID on chip (ROC), an innovative NVMe ROC, a DRAM-less input/output (I/O) processor with HW RAID-0, 1, 10 and a cost-effective I/O controller. These products service a range of markets, including cloud infrastructure, enterprise storage arrays, SATA HBAs, networked video surveillance, external directly attached USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt-3 storage (DAS), and entry-to-mid-range servers.

The AHCI ROC is currently sampling to company’s customers; the other products will be available in 2017.

“With this latest product offering, Marvell leveraged customer feedback and the company’s long-term leadership and experience in storage to deliver flexible, high-performance, yet efficient and low power storage controllers,” said Pantelis Alexopoulos, interim Co-CEO and EVP, storage business group, Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. “Marvell’s family of 88RC13xx controllers further supports our mission to develop comprehensive storage solutions that address a variety of platforms and application across client, enterprise and cloud infrastructure markets.“

“To meet the wide ranging requirements of today’s marketplace, storage systems need to support multiple forms of connectivity, such as 6Gb SATA, NVMe, USB 3.1, and Thunderbolt-3. Another necessity is RAID functionality that does not put demands on the host processor, thus enhancing overall system performance,” said Mark Geenen, president, market analysis, TrendFocus. “The Marvell 88RC13xx RAID storage controllers meet those requirements and will provide the features and flexibility that systems designers need.“

The 88RC13xx product line integrates a dual core Cortex-R5 CPU complex to off-load RAID functions from the host processor, while maximizing storage performance and minimizing latencies. Implementing AHCI and NVMe options for the host interface provides the alternative of maintaining legacy SW compatibility, while supporting a seamless migration path to NVMe storage connectivity to target superior performance. The integration of enclosure management functionalities and a number of general purpose I/O pins can reduce total system cost, while the ability to act as a boot device fully compatible with default OS drivers makes the 88RC13xx a versatile family of products.

The 88RC13xx controllers are also compatible with existing port multipliers, including company’s 88SM97xx product series, the industry’s first 6Gb SATA port multiplier.

88RC13xx product line includes:

• 88RC1348 AHCI ROC with USB 3.1, RAID-0,1,5,6,10, dual Cortex R5 processor

• 88RC1368 NVMe ROC with USB 3.1, RAID-0,1,5,6,10, dual Cortex R5 processor

• 88RC1328 I/O Processor with USB 3.1, RAID-0,1,10, dual Cortex R5 processor

• 88SE1337 I/O controller

Key features of 88RC13xx controllers include:

• Eight 6Gb SATA Ports

• Four lanes of PCIe 3.0

• USB 3.1 port

• Dual Cortex-R5 600MHz on-chip processors

• Hardware RAID-0, 1, 5, 6, 10

• Port multiplier support

• Support for up to 40 GPIO pins

• SPI interface for external Option ROM (legacy or uEFI) bootable controller support