6Gb SAS RAID-on-Chip Controllers by PMC-Sierra

PMC-Sierra, Inc. announced the SRCv family of 6Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (RoC) Controllers, including the industry’s first 24-port RoC, which enables the highest levels of server performance and connectivity, along with an eight-port RoC targeted at the volume x86 server market.

Data center demands for increasing computing power, networking bandwidth and support for virtualization applications are driving system requirements for improved host bus interface, SAS I/O and RAID performance. Both SRCv devices are based on PMC-Sierra’s proven RoCstar architecture and multi-core processor subsystem, more than double the IOPS and throughput performance of existing solutions, and fully leverage PCI Express 3.0. The devices are SAS 2.1 compliant and consume 30 percent less power than comparable solutions.

"PMC-Sierra’s SRCv family represents a major advancement in RAID-on-Chip technology that will help our customers deliver storage solutions to address the increasing system performance demands driven by virtualization and enabled by SSDs," said Derek Dicker, vice president, marketing, Enterprise Storage Division, PMC-Sierra. "Compared to our first-generation SRC device, the SRCv delivers a stunning doubling in performance in a similar power envelope, and simultaneously shrinks the package size of the device by roughly 20 percent. These advancements support PMC-Sierra’s continued pursuit of technology and product leadership in the enterprise storage semiconductor market."

PMC-Sierra’s SRCv devices are based on the same multi-core processor subsystem and RoCstar architecture as its predecessor, the SRC 8x6G RoC controller. The architecture efficiently interconnects all device subsystems, eliminating internal bottlenecks and resource contentions that limit competing shared-bus solutions. By enabling simultaneous access to all chip resources, RoCstar technology improves system performance by increasing I/O throughput and lowering latency. IT professionals will see a marked performance increase in time-critical functions such as RAID rebuilds and data backup.

"Clients require next-generation server and storage technology leveraging high speed SAS connectivity to maximize performance of their business applications," said McLeod Glass, director of marketing, Industry Standard Servers, HP. "By integrating HP’s 6Gb/s SAS SmartArray products with PMC-Sierra’s RAID-on-Chip Controller, HP delivers impressive levels of performance, reliability and power efficiency for next-generation scale-out storage platforms."

The SRCv family, which includes the 24-port PM8015 SRCv 24x6G and the eight-port PM8020 SRCv 8x6G, integrates the latest in host, drive and memory interface standards with RAID hardware acceleration and an advanced multi-core processor subsystem.

The devices integrate other advanced features, including:

• Eight and 24-Port SAS 2.1 Controller compatible with 6.0/3.0/1.5 Gbit/s SAS/SATA;
• Eight Lane PCI Express 3.0 host interface, doubling the host bus interface bandwidth – full duplex 2.5/5.0/8.0 Gbit/s per lane;
• RoCstar contention-free architecture;
• DDR3-1600 Memory Controller;
• Single-root IO virtualization (SR-IOV) support;
• High performance MIPS-based multi-processor subsystem;
• Block DMA engine; and
• Hardware XOR and Reed-Solomon Engines for RAID 5 and 6 acceleration.

Availability
PMC-Sierra’s PM8020 SRCv 8x6G and the PM8015 SRCv 24x6G are sampling now to select OEM customers.