Availability of AMCC Power Architecture-based NAS Reference Designs

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation unveiled its strategy to drive advanced storage solutions into residential and enterprise applications with complete reference designs encompassing all the hardware, software and enclosure components needed to accelerate time to market. The launch culminates with the availability of AMCC’s Power Architecture-based network attached storage (NAS) reference designs to be featured in live demonstrations at ESC Silicon Valley, March 31-April 2 in San Jose, Calif.

The network topology in the home is quickly evolving toward a centrally-located NAS server providing highly available and easily accessible connectivity amongst existing devices such as PCs, DVRs and MP3 players and new classes of devices such as networked televisions and portable media players. AMCC is fueling this transition through its expertise in transporting, processing, and storing information and its Power Architecture product portfolio by providing a NAS reference design with the industry’s best performance and the resources to support process-intensive applications. The company’s Power Architecture SoC devices provide an optimal combination of industry-leading performance and low power by leveraging technology that accelerates a wide variety of connectivity protocols from Ethernet to storage.

AMCC NAS reference design family feature 1- to 4-disk configurations based on AMCC Power Architecture embedded processors. The reference designs provide such features as Gigabit Ethernet with TCP/IP acceleration, PCIe ports, USB 2.0 ports, and SATA-II support, along with a storage-optimized software platform offering NAS OEMs a cost-competitive configuration. The platform delivers the fastest I/O performance in its class based on multiple industry-standard NAS benchmarks.

The NAS-optimized open source software integrated into AMCC reference designs includes a Samba file system, TCP offload acceleration for optimal network performance, and a multiple device (MD) driver with hardware RAID support. Designed from conception to enable turn-key solutions, the AMCC NAS reference designs include management path software, schematics, layout files, Linux, and U-Boot firmware.

"With the explosion of digital content available in the home and small and medium business markets, NAS vendors and consumers are looking for next generation, high performance, easy-to-use, centralized storage solutions that can provide anytime, anywhere access to their multimedia data, and this has caused an increase in demand for more specific network storage processor solutions," said Sergis Mushell, storage semiconductor analyst at Gartner. “AMCC offers a unique solution to the market with their Power Architecture processors and tuned software whereas, up to today, only ARM, x86 and MIPS® based solutions were available.”

“As the volume of digital content continues to explode in home entertainment and small business settings, AMCC continues its innovation into the emerging converged network landscape with a reference design that delivers on the promise of network attached storage devices providing high-speed multimedia file management and access,” said Gopi Sirineni , AMCC’s Vice President Consumer and SMB Business. “AMCC’s Power Architecture product portfolio is expertly designed for the unique challenges of addressing cost-effective SATA storage applications. Additionally, AMCC’s NAS optimized software provides developers with turn-key platforms that accelerate time to market in this highly competitive market segment.”