Features - Storage Innovations:

LSI LOGIC DELIVERS SERIAL ATTACHED SCSI CONTROLLER IC

LSI Logic Corp announced that it has delivered and verified the industry's first single-chip 3Gbps Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller IC. SAS protocol and both initiator and target mode functionality have been verified. The 3Gbps controller, an LSISAS1064, uses Fusion-MPT (Message Passing Technology) architecture to speed OEM system development. Because the SAS physical layer is compatible with Serial ATA (SATA), users will have the choice of populating their systems with SAS or SATA hard disk drives, or a combination of both.

SAS technology enables SCSI interface solutions beyond Ultra320 to the next-generation Direct Attach Storage (DAS) enterprise server and high-performance workstation markets while retaining device-level backward compatibility. The SAS standard defines a device-level enterprise storage interface incorporating SCSI command sets, serial point-to-point interconnections, dual porting, increased addressability and the ability to scale to small form factors.

"The Direct Attached Storage (DAS) market, in terms of terabytes, will continue to see healthy growth, as companies such as LSI Logic successfully position SAS as the follow-on technology to parallel SCSI," said Dave Reinsel, research manager of Hard Disk Drives and Components at IDC. "New technologies must provide both performance enhancements and cost efficiencies, and they must be delivered on time. This will be especially important as the server market transitions from Ultra320 SCSI to SAS."

LSI Logic's silicon has now verified performance in key OEM benefit areas such as:

• Higher performance

• Full duplex, 3Gbps end-to-end data transfers direct to SAS drives and 1.5 Gbps data transmission to SATA drives
• Bandwidth aggregation

• Increased reliability and availability

• More extensive error recovery techniques, multi-initiator and dual-active port support
• Serial cable interface at 3Gbps

• Greater scalability

• Extended physical device addressing range
• Connection to out-of-box storage, 8-meter cable length
• Port aggregation

• Greater cost and device flexibility

• Connection through the expander to SATA drives
• Support for both SAS and SATA drives (common physical interface)
• Initiator and target mode functionality
• Support for 3.5-inch and small form factor 2.5-inch disk drives

• Industry standards interoperability

• SAS protocol compliance: SSP (Serial Attached SCSI protocol), full Serial ATA Tunneling Protocol (STP), SATA protocol, and Serial Management Protocol (SMP)
• Data transmissions through expander with wide-port capability

"Being first to move beyond the prototype phase is a critical milestone and demonstration of our first-to-market leadership. Customers will be able to confidently continue investing in SCSI technology that delivers a scalable feature set and robust reliability," said David Steele, director of product planning and management for LSI Logic storage standard products division. "Delivering silicon ahead of schedule is a testament to our engineering processes, quality control, and the benefits of using the Fusion-MPT architecture. This underscores our commitment to lead the industry with reliable, first-to-market SAS products."

In 2003, LSI Logic pioneered SAS/SATA disk drive interoperability jointly testing with Fujitsu, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Maxtor and Seagate Technology; was first to publicly demonstrate the exchange of data between SAS prototype devices (July 2003 T10 meeting); was first to prove SAS/SATA prototype drive interoperability (October 2003 Maxtor Serial-In-A-Box Technology Symposium) and was first to show a functional SAS wide-port demonstration (with an HP system at Comdex 2003) using SAS prototype drives, production SATA drives and two SAS expander prototypes.

About LSI Logic Corp

LSI Logic Corp is a leading designer and manufacturer of communications, consumer and storage semiconductors for applications that access, interconnect and store data, voice and video. In addition, the company supplies storage network solutions for the enterprise. LSI Logic is headquartered at 1621 Barber Lane, Milpitas, CA 95035 and is online at www.lsilogic.com/.