Storage IO Controller Optimized for Data Centers

September 2014 – The growing data storage requirements of cloud server providers and data centers is driving a new generation of high speed IO control system. PMC has introduced a new chip that can be packaged in three separate configurations with a common pinout. The data centers are currently I/O bound, and complexities such as RAID and power dissipation are impacting current solutions and impacting the density of standard server racks.

PMC SAS & SATA I/O Controller with 3 different pinouts

PMC has released a new controller chip that targets 6G SATA and 12G SAS applications. The chip can be configured as 16 X 6G SATA, 8 X 12G SAS or 16 X 12G SAS. The chip is supported by a complete design kit for use of the chip in a plug in card – firmware, drivers, PCB, BOM, etc. These designs support new high density racks with 2U cards. The design allows for a building storage servers that will support up to 80 SAS drives.

The 16 port 12G SAS controller has a PCI GEN 3 interface. It is the first chip releases that supports 1M I/O per sec and 6.6Gbps PCIe. The design fits universal application over the three configurations with a common thermal model to go with the common pinout and a common power dissipation. This allows all three applications to use a common heatsink that fits the form factor of their server design. The single chip design minimizes board size and thermal dissipation by taking the place of 2 chips and a port expander for the same function.

The chip supports direct attach SATA with a sweet spot of 50-100 devices. The 8 or 16 port SAS controller has a built in expander. The device in this configuration allows for SAS attachment of up to 512 SATA drives to a single controller. The part is currently shipping to key customers, and will be in full production in late 2014.