Top Of The News - Hardware:

Silicon Image Debuts 3 Gb/s-Capable SATA Controller

Silicon Image Inc, a leader in high-bandwidth semiconductor and system solutions for mass markets, announced the SiI 3124, its most advanced Serial ATA (SATA) host controller to date, for enterprise storage applications. The SiI 3124 is the next in the SATALink series of Serial ATA host controllers building off the success of the SiI 3114 that has won numerous design wins in high-end PC and entry-level server applications.

The SiI 3124 is a 64-bit 133 MHz PCI-X to 4-Port Serial ATA controller that is available in two pin-compatible versions: the SiI 3124-1 which operates at first-generation SATA speeds of 1.5 Gb/s per port and the SiI 3124-2 which operates at SATA speeds of 1.5 Gb/s and also provides support for 3 Gb/s signaling. The Serial ATA working group is currently completing the final details of the 3 Gb/s specification for second-generation SATA signal speeds. Silicon Image has been an active participant in the development of this specification, and has designed the 3124-2 based on the current version of the spec, with enough flexibility to accommodate future changes.

"A controller with native command queuing, enclosure management device support and port multiplier capabilities is ideal for deploying SATA in server and networked storage segments," stated Knut Grimsrud, Serial ATA working group chairman and Intel senior principal engineer. "Intel is pleased that Silicon Image has integrated these Serial ATA II features into a single controller that provides a comprehensive solution addressing the needs of this important market segment."

The SiI 3124 is compliant with the Serial ATA 1.0 specification and supports all SATA II extensions to the Serial ATA 1.0 specification, including native command queuing, enclosure management device support, selectable output strengths for backplanes, hot-plug support and FIS-based switching with port multipliers. The controller also provides support for tagged command queuing. Silicon Image provides SiI 3124 customers with drivers for the Windows, Linux and Netware operating systems, for both RAID and non-RAID operations. Software RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring), RAID 1+0 (mirrored stripe) and RAID 5 (parity stripe) functions are supported through Silicon Image's SATARaid software RAID management utility.

The SiI 3124 provides a host of enterprise-class customer benefits that position it ahead of competing enterprise SATA solutions, including proven SATA compliance, best-in-class I/O performance, RAID software integration and FIS-based switching for port multipliers. The SiI 3124 feature-set coupled with Silicon Image's strong reputation for customer support for software, hardware and high-speed circuits, provide both PC and enterprise-class OEMs and systems integrators with one-stop shopping for easy implementation of Serial ATA solutions.

"The SiI 3124 was designed for high performance," said Ed Pak, vice president of storage products at Silicon Image. "Our implementation enables customers looking for enterprise-level performance at a more affordable price to achieve that goal using the SiI 3124 with Serial ATA drives, now readily available. Today, fibre channel solutions run at 200 MB/s, SCSI implementations operate at 320 MB/s, and now we have enabled our new SATALink Serial ATA product to run at 300 MB/s.

Silicon Image will be demonstrating the SiI 3124 host controller Sept. 16-18 in San Jose, Calif., at the Intel Developer Forum in booth #436.