1.2 Million IO/s With Single LSI 12Gb SAS RAID-on-Chip Controller

LSI Corporation was demonstrating its next-generation 12Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) technology on September 13-15, at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco.

The IDF demonstration showcases a single 8-port 12Gb/s SAS ROC IC achieving over 1.2 million IOPS (I/O operations per second) running small block sequential reads/writes in a PCI Express 2.0 direct-attached storage configuration connected to eight 6Gb/s Seagate SAS 2.5-inch hard disk drives.

Integrating the latest enhancements in SAS and PCI Express technology, as well as LSI hardware acceleration engines, the LSI SAS ROC is designed to provide the I/O performance required to take advantage of the performance benefits of enterprise-class SSDs and server platforms based on the forthcoming PCI Express 3.0 specification.

"Solid-state drive performance coupled with the approaching industry transition to PCI Express 3.0-based server platforms is driving the need for 12Gb/s SAS connectivity," said Bill Wuertz, senior vice president and general manager, RAID Storage Division, LSI. "12Gb/s SAS will enable IT administrators to maximize their investments in existing infrastructure while meeting the storage demands of I/O-intensive applications, cloud datacenters and virtualized server environments."

Based on LSI’s fourth-generation SAS architecture, the 12Gb/s SAS ROC delivers a 57 percent improvement in IOPS performance and a 45 percent increase in I/O throughput compared to the previous-generation 6Gb/s SAS ROC. To achieve one million IOPS using the previous-generation product would have required multiple SAS ROCs and twelve hard disk drives, resulting in higher hardware acquisition costs and increased power, cooling and space requirements. Integration of the 12Gb/s SAS ROC into next-generation PCI Express 3.0-based systems is expected to deliver even higher performance levels.

"LSI has been a recognized contributor to the development and broad market adoption of SAS infrastructure," said Marty Czekalski, vice president, SCSI Trade Association and Emerging Architecture program manager, Seagate Technology. "The SCSI Trade Association is excited to see member companies such as LSI publicly demonstrating early prototypes of 12Gb/s SAS silicon. Early public demonstration is a key technology milestone and helps lay the foundation for the initial 12Gb/s SAS Plugfest in mid-2012."

According to industry estimates, 12Gb/s SAS market adoption will begin with the release of individual SAS components and devices, and gain momentum as OEMs begin production-volume shipments of 12Gb/s SAS-enabled servers and external storage systems. Volume shipments of 12Gb/s SAS-enabled servers is estimated to occur by early 2013, followed by the availability of external storage systems by mid-to-late 2013.