PMC-Sierra's 6Gbps SAS RAID-on-chip

HONG KONG: PMC-Sierra Inc. has announced that its PM8011 SRC 8x6G 6Gbps SAS RAID-on-Chip (RoC) is shipping on the new high-performance Smart Array RAID controller cards from HP. The superior performance and flexibility of PMC-Sierra's SRC RoC enables the next-generation 6Gbps SAS RAID platform to more than double the performance of existing RAID solutions.

The new HP P212, P410, and P411 Smart Array RAID cards harness the full throughput of 6Gbps SAS and 5Gbps PCI Express 2.0 using PMC-Sierra's innovative RoCstar Contention-Free Architecture to maximize performance in equipment such as the HP ProLiant DL385 G5p and HP ProLiant DL580 G5 servers.

"IT professionals will see dramatically improved performance with the new HP Smart Array cards, enabling them to address their immediate storage needs, while future-proofing their data centers for emerging requirements," said Greg Lang, president and chief executive officer, PMC-Sierra. "Providing industry-leading performance and being first to market with end-to-end 6Gbps SAS chipsets solidifies PMC-Sierra's position as a technology leader and strengthens our relationship with HP."

According to IDC, a global provider of market intelligence, server shipments are expected to continue to grow above the 10-million-units-per-year mark by 2011. HP is the recognized server market leader by volume with market share of more than 30 per cent.

"Customers need improved RAID performance because of data center demands for higher computing power, storage throughput, and support for virtualization," said Mike Gill, vice president of Industry Standard Servers, HP. "PMC-Sierra's advanced RoC architecture integrated into the HP Smart Array RAID stack enables us to offer the industry's highest performance server and storage solutions." 

Data center demands for higher computing power, networking bandwidth and support for virtualization applications are driving system requirements for improved host bus interface, input-output, and RAID performance. PMC-Sierra's RoC device is SAS-2 compliant, doubling the storage throughput to 6Gbps and enabling a new level of system reliability, availability and scalability.  (full Story)