76th Patent for Dot Hill

Dot Hill Systems Corp.www.dothill.com announced that a patent was awarded for new technology that increases the likelihood of non-stop storage system operation in high-temperature environments, resulting in extended life of Dot Hill storage products and reliable data availability for customers.

"The risk of storage controllers failing due to heat is greater in applications such as mobile computing, military and other ruggedized computing environments, and some smaller businesses, where temperatures cannot be reliably controlled," said Jim Kuenzel, senior vice president of engineering at Dot Hill Systems. "Thanks to our background in markets such as these and our proprietary ASIC and software, we’ve developed an innovative means to ensure that Dot Hill storage arrays continue to operate in high temperatures so that organizations are never without access to their data."

The company’s 76th U.S. patent 7,861,113 makes it possible for Dot Hill software to use heat sensors to trigger responses that prevent overheating, which can damage components or corrupt data. The software responses reduce the frequency of instructions and voltage to components, which temporarily slows operations or clock speed and allows reliable operation, even at elevated temperatures. When the danger of overheating has passed, the software allows the controllers to resume normal, full-speed operation.

Dot Hill’s patented power management system is used in the company’s 2002 Series and 3000 Series arrays. The newest patent includes 78 separate claims covering both single controller and dual controller environments. The claims involve failover, queuing, management of read and write instructions, and power controls.