LSI 6Gb SAS Controllers and Cards Adopted by Several Storage Companies

LSI Corporation announced that Dot Hill, Infortrend, NEC and Xyratex have selected LSI 6Gb/s SAS solutions to enable their next-generation external storage platforms. As the SAS market segment leader with over 13 million SAS ICs shipped worldwide, LSI provides the industry’s only end-to-end 6Gb/s SAS product portfolio for external storage applications, including SAS controller and expander ICs and SAS-to-SATA bridge cards.

"By offering OEM customers a complete production-ready family of solutions for external storage applications, LSI is enabling the growth of SAS interface technology in external storage," said Steve Fingerhut, senior director of marketing, Storage Components Group, LSI. "And, because our 6Gb/s SAS portfolio stands on the shoulders of our proven 3Gb/s SAS products, we’re able to provide OEMs with reduced risk and offer a time-to-market advantage."

LSI offers an 8-port 6Gb/s SAS+SATA controller designed for blade, entry and mid-range servers as well as external storage systems; a family of 6Gb/s SAS expanders (24-, 28- and 36-port) that allow multiple hosts and targets to connect through a switched device for greater scalability; and SAS-to-SATA bridge cards which allow existing 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA drives in enterprise storage environments to be enhanced with essential enterprise-class features. The products are shipping in production volumes and are supported by a full range of turnkey software designed to minimize OEM integration cost and accelerate time to market.

According to industry estimates, 6Gb/s SAS market adoption will begin with the release of individual SAS components and devices, and gain momentum as tier-one OEMs begin production volume shipments of 6Gb/s SAS-enabled servers and external storage systems. Widespread market adoption of 6Gb/s SAS-enabled servers is estimated to occur by end of year, followed by the availability of external storage systems in early to mid-2010.

Since the inception of SAS, LSI has delivered industry-leading products across its portfolio of controller ICs, expanders, host bus and MegaRAID adapters, RAID-on-motherboard solutions and storage systems. By offering best-in-class SAS technologies, broad interoperability and single-vendor support, LSI is the silicon-to-systems supplier of choice for OEMs that want to deliver a wide range of storage solutions.

"Dot Hill leverages a highly modular, dynamic storage architecture to empower its OEMs in the volume storage market," said Andy Mills, Vice President of Marketing, Dot Hill. "We rely on strong partners such as LSI to help us deliver new technologies like 6Gb/s SAS. The end results for our customers are technology leadership and proven solutions."

"Infortrend has taken a leadership role in technical innovation in RAID storage solutions and LSI is one of the key partners we are working with to deliver high quality 6Gb/s SAS storage solutions to the market," said Thomas Kao, director of product planning and global marketing at Infortrend Technology, Inc. "We share the commitment to help users meet demanding application requirements, and in turn, realize great business returns with best-in-class storage solutions."

"LSI and its market-leading 6Gb/s SAS technology enables NEC to engineer storage products which meet the performance, scalability and reliability needs of our customers worldwide," said Tetsuyuki Hishikawa, Chief Manager, NEC System Storage Products Division. "Our valuable tradition of cooperation benefits both companies, and provides the best possible solutions for our customers."

"Xyratex has a history of delivering industry leading storage solutions, and our support for LSI’s SAS-to-SATA bridging technology continues that tradition of product innovation," said Paul Vogt, senior director product management, Networked Storage Solutions, Xyratex. "We look forward to working with LSI to enhance 6Gb/s SAS/SATA technology, enabling us to provide the cost-effective, high-performance, high-reliability systems that drive our customer’s success."