Areca With XMC/PMC 8-Port SAS RAID Controllers

Areca Technology Corporation (ARECA) announced that its XMC/PMC SAS RAID controllers have featured with two SFF-8470 connectors at the front bezel. Each connector combines four SAS/SATA ports into a single jack-screw style locked connection for operation in rugged environments.

ARC-1680P is a reconfigurable PMC/XMC (PCI Mezzanine Card) that is ideal for ruggedized systems requiring high bandwidth storage. It is based on the Intel IOP348 controller, equipped with 8 ports of either SAS or SATA connectivity at 3.0 Gb/s per ports. Features include dual core IOP348 I/O processor, 512MB DDR2-533 memory and PCI-X or PCIe x8 interface. A heat-sink is provided adequate cooling for the Intel IOP348 I/O controller and conducts heat to front bracket. ARC-1680P can be used on Video/IR systems and Signal Intelligence, etc. Application areas can be found in markets such as medical, military, aerospace and automation.

Since the ARC-1680P is offered as a hybrid PMC/XMC, it can be used with the carrier boards that have PMC sites on-board, as well as newer carrier boards which offer XMC sites. Designed as a plug-and-play solution, the ARC-1680P mezzanine board automatically selects the data bus according to whether the signals are present on the latest high-speed functionality P15 connector in the XMC form factor. Otherwise, it switches to PCI-X on the PMC connectors. An integrated micro DIP switch allows the PMC connection to be used in lower performance 3.3 V PCI busses with reduced throughput capability. This integrated micro DIP switch also allows for manual override of the host bus selection.

ARC-1680P SAS RAID controllers can also provide RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 6, 30, 50, 60, Single Disk or JBOD for maximum configuration flexibility. The SAS RAID controller supports broad operating system including 7/2008/Vista/2003/XP/2000, Linux (Open Source), FreeBSD (Open Source), Solaris (Open Source), Mac and more, along with key system monitoring features such as enclosure management(SES2, SMP & SGPIO) and SNMP function.