Thecus NAS Powered by Cavium Networks Econa Processor

Cavium Networks, Inc., provider of semiconductor products that enable processing for networking, communications, and the digital home, announced that Thecus Technology Corp. has begun shipping their latest generation of NAS product family based on Cavium’s ECONA System-On-Chips (SOCs).

This product family offers scalable platforms targeting low-, mid- and high-end Consumer and SMB NAS markets. According to a recent market research report from In-Stat, Thecus was ranked #1 in Asia and #6 worldwide in NAS market share.

Having deployed multiple generations of storage and NAS products worldwide, Thecus has a good vantage point to directly assess the rapid growth in storage demands both in the SMB as well as Consumer space. The next generation Consumer and SMB NAS products require performance while keeping the development and deployment costs low. To address these challenges, Thecus needed a platform that provided processing headroom to enable multiple applications as well as deploy a family of products using a single platform. Cavium’s ECONA CNS34XX System On Chip (SoC) family provided a combination of processing capacity, security and scalability, hardware acceleration and low power consumption. ECONA processors provide multi-gigabit NAS performance under 2W.

The N2200Plus from Thecus is a 2-bay NAS appliance targeted at the consumer market. Based on the ECONA CNS3420, the N2200Plus provides features like RAID-0/1, hot-swap, NAS and DAS modes and integrated download manager. In addition, the N2200Plus also integrates features such as active LCD display, full multimedia support and USB2.0 OTG support. The N4100Eco is a energy-efficient 4-Bay NAS appliance targeted at the SMB/SOHO markets. Based on the CNS3420, the N4100Eco provides integrated RAID-5 support with best-in-class performance / watt.

"With multiple generations of successful product launches in the low-, mid- and high-end storage markets, Thecus has built up a strong brand presence in the worldwide NAS market," said Andy Liao, Product Director at Thecus Technology. "Our choice of the central processing platform for our latest generation of NAS products had to meet very stringent performance, quality and scalability requirements to protect and build on this brand presence. We were impressed with the performance characteristics and the unique architecture of the CNS3XXX ARM SoC family from Cavium that enabled us to truly differentiate our products in the market."

"Thecus is a recognized leader in the NAS market," said Sridhar Gollapudi, Sr. Director of Marketing, Connected Home and Office Group at Cavium Networks. "The combination of Thecus’ innovative product offerings and ECONA family’s unique architecture will deliver innovative, high-performance products at very low power and attractive price points."