LSI Corp. said it had begun to ship production-level 12Gb/s SAS RAID-on-Chip (ROC) and I/O controller solutions to OEM customers. 12Gb/s SAS technology is designed to deliver double the data transfer rate of prior SAS solutions and unleashes the full performance potential of next-generation enterprise systems deploying high-performance solid-state storage.

“Today’s announcement underscores LSI’s 12Gb/s SAS leadership as we continue to drive first-to-market solutions for data protection and acceleration. With leading designs and unique capabilities like DataBolt technology, LSI 12Gb/s SAS solutions are designed to deliver the performance required for the most demanding next-generation server and storage platforms,” said Kelly Bryant, vice president of marketing at RAID storage division at LSI.

At CeBIT, LSI is demonstrating the LSISAS3108 ROC plus MegaRAID 6 technology along with the LSISAS3x48 SAS expander. For those looking to take advantage of 12Gb/s speeds with existing 6Gb/s drive infrastructure, LSI is showcasing DataBolt technology, a bandwidth optimizer performance acceleration feature. DataBolt technology, combined with the extended bandwidth of PCIe 3.0, is designed to deliver double the throughput performance while using today’s 6Gb/s SAS or SATA drive solutions. With this feature, DataBolt technology offers product enhancements and future proofing that helps protect customers’ hard disk drive (HDD) and solid state drive (SSD) investments.

“The explosive growth of data in cloud and enterprise datacenters drives the need for a higher-performance storage interface that enables more rapid access to data. 12Gb/s SAS addresses this requirement by doubling the performance of current 6Gb/s SAS-based systems, and helps to unlock the full potential of PCI Express 3.0-based systems and the most recent solid-state storage solutions,” said Jeff Janukowicz, research director for solid state storage and enabling technologies at IDC.

By doubling the data transfer rate of 6Gb/s SAS solutions, 12Gb/s SAS allows the SAS infrastructure to deliver bandwidth that exceeds that of PCI Express 3.0 with a single host bus adapter (HBA). The improved bandwidth, backed by I/O processing capabilities to maximize link utilization, supports increased scaling of traditional HDDs as well as improved SSD performance. 12Gb/s SAS also provides customers with investment protection with backward compatibility with 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s SAS.

Production-volume shipments of the 12Gb/s SAS ROC and 12Gb/s SAS I/O controller are occurring this month, followed by the availability of 12Gb/s SAS expanders, MegaRAID controllers and HBAs in Q2.

Tags: LSI, SAS, RAID, HDD