News

posted on 06 March 2008 18:00

LSI is sampling 6Gbit/s serial-attached SCSI (SAS) expander integrated circuits to its OEMs, laying the groundwork for a general doubling of SAS speed to 6Gbit/s.

Bill Wuertz, LSI's storage components group SVP, said: "Serial Attached SCSI has penetrated both the server and storage markets and volumes of 3Gb/s SAS solutions are still ramping. ... LSI (is) looking to the future. ... we are able to provide OEMs with robust 6Gb/s SAS expanders that reduce risk and lay the early foundation for the SAS-2 infrastructure."

The LSI SAS2x36 is a 36-port 6Gb/s SAS expander with an integrated ARM processor for topology management functions such as discovery and enclosure services. (Current shipping LSI SAS expander pictured.) It supports SAS and SATA data transfer rates of 1.5, 3, and 6Gb/s and incorporates enhanced features such as Spread Spectrum Clocking for EMI reduction, T10-based zoning for network storage security applications, and SAS multiplexing to maximize bandwidth performance to legacy storage devices.

The LSI SAS2x36 SAS expander provides storage environments with the ability to connect multiple hosts and targets through a switched device for scalability and with fault-tolerant path-redundancy to improve system reliability ideal for today’s enterprise data centers.

It will also have Decision Feedback Equalization for longer cables, and multiplexing. SAS-2 will also provide customers with investment protection by providing backward compatibility with 3Gbit/s SAS technologies.

Major OEMs are sampling LSI's new IC which is the first of its kind. The SCSI Trade Association expects 6Gbit/s SAS to be available in the second half of 2009. It means faster and bigger SAS drive arrays.