News From Inside The Industry

New SAS Controller for Workstations

Adaptec today started shipping a new Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Controller to major workstation manufacturers. The controller ASIC delivers unprecedented 4.8 GB/second performance, about seven times that of Ultra320 SCSI, for large database, video, online transaction processing (OLTP) and other data-intensive applications.

"Organizations are demanding higher bandwidth solutions that enable them to optimize the price-performance of storage infrastructures used for data-intensive applications," said Ahmet Houssein, vice president and general manager of Adaptec's Storage Solutions Group. "Adaptec's Serial Attached SCSI controller chip delivers unprecedented performance at a cost comparable to today's SCSI solutions to meet these needs."

The Adaptec Serial Attached SCSI chip enables the new data speeds on the strength of eight ports -- the highest port count in the industry -- that also deliver industry-leading storage configuration flexibility, allowing organizations to easily and cost-effectively configure both internal and external storage. The chip's eight ports also will give organizations an easy way to scale to 100-disk drive configurations to meet their expanding storage needs. In addition, the Adaptec ASIC's power-thrifty design will enable small, cool-running systems to help drive the industry's transition to denser, higher-capacity servers.

The chip will feature Adaptec's integrated HostRAID technology to protect customer data, deliver industry-leading price-performance and provide a smooth migration path to Adaptec's direct-attached and networked storage arrays. The ASIC also will be the core of a family of microprocessor-based RAID controllers that deliver advanced data protection.

"As storage requirements continue to escalate, demand is growing for higher data transfer rates, greater scalability and fault tolerance, and flexible, easy to deploy systems that accommodate both low cost bulk storage and the performance and reliability demands of mission critical applications," said Paul Perez, vice president, storage, networking and infrastructure, Industry Standard Servers, HP. "Devices like Adaptec's 8-port Serial Attached SCSI controller chip will help enable systems with these capabilities."

Today's Ultra320 SCSI controllers deliver 640 megabyte/second data transfer rates over two channels. The Adaptec Serial Attached SCSI ASIC combines eight point-to-point ports that provide full bandwidth to each disk drive with independent, simultaneous data transfers across all eight connections to produce a scalable I/O grid that will deliver the highest levels of performance for next-generation storage subsystems.

Adaptec demonstrated a prototype Serial Attached SCSI controller board at the industry's first full-scale Serial Attached SCSI interoperability plugfest early this month. The event included many of the industry's leading disk drive, controller, test equipment, cable, connector and system suppliers. The Serial Attached SCSI components and systems were tested for multi-vendor interoperability.

Adaptec Serial Attached SCSI -- Enabling Seamless Storage Growth The Adaptec Serial Attached SCSI controller chip and the follow-on family of Serial Attached SCSI RAID add-in cards will deliver 3 gigabit/second full-duplex data transfer rates per port with a roadmap to 12 gigabits/second for the highest levels of system performance.