LSI, Dell and Seagate Demonstrate 6Gbs SAS

LSI Corporation, in collaboration with Dell and Seagate, announced the companies have successfully achieved 6Gb/s SAS I/O throughput and confirmation of data integrity in an interoperability demonstration.

The technology demonstration used LSI 6Gb/s SAS RAID-On-Chip (ROC) controller ICs and 6Gb/s SAS high-port count expanders, performing read/write I/Os, at full bandwidth. The end-to-end interoperability demo is a critical milestone toward achieving a complete SAS ecosystem.

"A successful demonstration of 6Gb/s SAS interoperability by three storage industry leaders will be a clear indication that product engineering, validation and interoperability testing is progressing well, and paves the way for production volumes in late 2009," said Dave Reinsel, vice president of storage and semiconductor research at IDC.

The demo environment validates RAID functionality, and shows advanced interoperability and backward compatibility operating within a standard Windows Server(R) OS environment. Interoperability demonstrations are being offered by LSI in a hosted suite prior to the SCSI Trade Association SAS Solutions Open House today at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, Calif.

"To help accelerate the maturity of 6Gb/s SAS and deliver the enhanced functionality customers need, it is critical for us to work closely with our silicon and hard disk drive partners in early interoperability and validation testing," said Howard Shoobe, senior manager, Dell storage product management. "We want to help customers by bringing end-to-end 6Gb/s throughput as well as the security and reliability which come along with this next generation of SAS."

LSI engineers verified interoperability using a Dell prototype server with the LSI SAS2108 PCI Express 2.0 to 6Gb/s SAS RAID-On-Chip and the LSI SAS2x36 6Gb/s SAS expander, and Seagate 6Gb/s and 3Gb/s SAS and 3Gb/s SATA hard disk drives. The demonstration showcases execution of I/Os — both direct-connect and through an expander, at 6Gb/s speed. Read/write comparisons were validated, confirming data integrity over millions of I/O operations.

IT professionals will expect a complete ecosystem of servers, hard disk drives, and IC and board components to be tested and broadly available prior to wide-spread industry adoption of 6Gb/s SAS solutions. Proven interoperability is a critical step on the path toward marketplace deployment of a complete ecosystem.

Key new features and functionality delivered with 6Gb/s SAS include: