Seagate Technology and LSI Logic have demonstrated Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) dual-port and 3Gb/s transfer rates using the first 2.5-inch enterprise disc drives and LSI Logic SAS1064 controller ICs.
The demonstrations, at the recent Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, highlighted advanced interface technology and the new 2.5-inch platform for enterprise disc drives. Seagate plans to deliver its first SAS products in fall 2004. LSI Logic will provide a comprehensive family of SAS controllers, expanders, host bus adapters and ROMB and RAID storage adapter solutions.
With dual-port capability, the Seagate/LSI demonstrations showcased a key differentiator between SAS and SATA drives. In enterprise environments that demand reliability, high-availability, and performance, dual port is an essential feature to ensure a stable system environment as well as to enable added performance for Direct Attached Storage subsystems.
Because the SAS physical layer is compatible with SATA, users will have the choice of populating SAS systems with either SATA or SAS hard disc drives, or a combination of both. Boasting features that liberate SCSI from its parallel predecessor, SAS, the companies said, delivers new levels of breakthrough speed and connectivity while retaining the functionality and reliability.
With enterprise storage requirements escalating and becoming more complex, the vendors said factors such as data center consolidation, security, scalability and accessibility are more critical than ever. Enterprise data centers must be online all the time, fulfill requests from numerous users simultaneously, allow for constant growth and expansion and be maintained while in operation. Serial Attached SCSI meets all these demands while providing the highest performance at optimal capacity points, the companies said.
For more information, visit: http://specials.seagate.com/sas and http://lsilogic.com/sas.
