LSI said that it is sampling the LSISAS2208 dual-core 6Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) IC to OEM customers, which is intended to support the forthcoming PCI Express 3.0 specification, within the PCI-SIG and provide I/O performance levels that meet the needs of server platforms based on PCI Express 3.0 and flash-based solid-state drive (SSD) storage.
According to LSI, the draft PCI Express 3.0 specification will extend PCI Express data rates up to 8.0 gigatransfers per second per lane, doubling the host bandwidth that was achievable earlier. The SAS ROC delivers performance levels of up to 600,000 input-output operations per second (IOPS), allowing server platforms to take advantage of the performance benefit of SSDs for applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, databases, web serving and business intelligence.
The company said that the LSISAS2208 ROC integrates a 72-bit DDR3-1333 SDRAM interface, hardware acceleration engines and dual-core 800MHz PowerPC processor for optimised RAID performance. In addition, it incorporates enhancements such as single root I/O virtualisation (SR-IOV) for performance in virtualised environments and improved system performance and data security.
Bill Wuertz, senior vice president and general manager of storage components division at LSI, said: As the industry now begins to look towards the PCI Express 3.0 wave of server platforms, the new LSISAS2208 ROC will enable OEMs to take advantage of the performance capabilities offered by the new specification, once again demonstrating LSI’s ability to help keep our customers at the forefront of industry inflection points.
