Oxford Unveils NAS SoC for CE Storage

Oxford Semiconductor unveiled the latest additions to its family of storage platforms that enable reliable, robust storage systems for the connected digital lifestyle.

Aimed at the emerging personal shared network-attached storage (NAS) market, Oxford introduced the highly integrated OXE810x NAS platform, designed for bridging between Ethernet and up to two serial advanced technology attachments (SATA) hard disks. The company also introduced the OXUFS936x RAID platform, a universal interface (i.e., USB2.0/FireWire/eSATA) to SATA digital storage and retrieval device with integrated hardware RAID controller for direct-attached storage (DAS) devices.

“The introduction of these platforms is extremely significant for both the market and the company,” stated Bill Schroeder, Oxford’s president and CEO. “Consumers live in a world exploding with high monetary and emotional value digital content. These new advanced platform designs enable our storage system customers to evolve their consumer and SOHO offerings with the market as their end customer needs change. This is particularly true of our NAS product, which we believe represents a true market enabler for today’s connected digital lifestyle.”

“Given that individuals increasingly are responsible for the growth in digital content creation, the personal storage market will continue its strong growth," commented Wolfgang Schlichting, Research Director, Removable Storage at IDC. "Innovative companies that address the ease of use and data security of personal shared storage (NAS) products are well positioned to take advantage of the growth opportunities in the Personal Storage market.”

Derived from Oxford Semiconductor’s first generation OXE800DSE architecture, the OXE810x NAS platform lowers BOM costs while almost tripling performance to enable more complex applications. Optimized for personal shared storage applications, the OXE810x solution platform hits the sweet spot of the mainstream personal shared storage market by providing system builders with an ideal balance between price and performance.

The first two NAS products available today are the OXE810SE single SATA controller and the OXE810DSE dual SATA controller, which supports hardware accelerated RAID 1. These OXE810x NAS platform devices require a minimal number of external components, integrating Gigabit Ethernet media access control (MAC), universal serial bus (USB) host ports and SATA host controller. Both devices have a hardware encryption engine for data security.

OXE810DSE dual SATA controller

Supporting the DAS market, the OXUFS936x high-performance RAID platform supports multiple RAID modes that can offer maximum performance (RAID 0), maximum data protection (RAID 1) or a combination of performance and data protection (RAID 5, 3 or 10). The platform is targeted at users who require maximum performance, reliability and ease of use at a reasonable price. Unlike other solutions available today, the performance of the OXUFS936x RAID platform can saturate the SATA II interface (3Gbps).

Two versions of the RAID platform have been released: the OXUFS936QSE and the OXUFS936DS. The OXUFS936QSE device supports up to four directly connected SATA disks. Host-based RAID mode configuration maximizes the RAID potential of the OXUFS936QSE, which also supports capacity in excess of 2.2 Terabytes, RAID array roaming and background RAID rebuilding. In addition, the device offers a range of LCD and LED user interfaces that are supported by the flexible software framework, greatly enhancing its capacity for product differentiation. The OXUFS936DS is the dual SATA drive member of the 936x RAID platform, aimed at the more cost sensitive two-drive direct-attached storage applications.

All four SoCs are available in volume production quantities.