Next Generation of Emulex InSpeed Embedded Storage Switch

Emulex Corporation introduced the availability of its next generation InSpeed Switch on Chip (SOC) 442 Embedded Storage Switch, which has already been adopted by OEMs. The InSpeed SOC 442 further extends Emulex’s broad portfolio of system-level products for the storage system and server blade markets. Emulex has shipped more than 58 million InSpeed embedded switch ports, making it one of the most highly deployed technologies in the storage industry.

"Going forward, technology advancements for enterprise performance class Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and Solid State Drive (SSD) drives will be focused on the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface protocol, creating drives that continue to increase capacity and performance in smaller and more power efficient packages," said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development, Emulex. "The InSpeed SOC 442 uniquely allows storage system providers to deploy these new drive advancements into existing field-proven system architectures and investments for highly competitive products for years to come."

The fifth generation InSpeed SOC 442 has already been deployed and is in design at tier-one storage system OEMs and will be used in root switch, server blade pass-through module, and most importantly, new enclosure controller module (ECM) applications, connecting drives to RAID controllers in storage system backends.

The InSpeed SOC 442 is Emulex’s solution for SAS drive connectivity at the enclosure controller module level and is an embedded storage switch available today that natively connects 2.5" small form factor drives in Fibre Channel-based storage systems. This capability allows storage system providers to leverage existing, field-proven technologies and does not require the deployment of completely new end-to-end SAS-based systems.

The new InSpeed switch supports a range of HDD and SSD technologies, including 6Gb/s SAS, 6Gb/s Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) and 4Gb/s Fibre Channel. Maximum performance is achieved with 8Gb/s Fibre Channel link speed connectivity, and per port speed agility with bandwidth aggregation. The InSpeed SOC 442 also offers new advanced state capture capabilities for troubleshooting issues, automatic trunking with failover pathing, and advanced diagnostics, performance monitoring and fault isolation to automatically ensure maximum storage system availability.

"SAS 6Gb/s is expected to become the standard interface for performance-optimized HDDs," said John Rydning, IDC’s research director for hard disk drives. "The InSpeed SOC 442 from Emulex provides an option for storage system OEMs with a Fibre Channel-based product portfolio to utilize higher capacity SAS HDDs in the future, and extend the ROI of their existing investments."