[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: High end PCIe storage/RAID adapters -- no PCI-X slots, but only PCI-X storage

[Chris Cox]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:
...
> I'm not really talking about tunneling.  I'm talking about
> SAS controllers directly controlling SATA drives.

It's a tunnel (from everything I've read).  That's why
many say it's fixable after release on some implementations.

...
> 
> They are aiming for the commodity space.  Broadcom bought
> ServerWorks, the company who has designed every Intel
> server chipset after the 450NX.

No doubt.  We'll have to see.

...
> 
> The Intel IOP332 is the PCIe version of the IOP331 (an
> improvement over the IOP321) typically used in XScale driven
> RAID designs.  I haven't seen anything other than the
> MegaRAID 320-2E using it.

True... you definitely want the Xscale chip for good
RAID5.  I've heard the 2E hasn't lived up the it's
slightly older brother, the 2X.

...
> 
> The BCM8603 has both PCI-X and PCIe (x8) arbitration, and can
> even act as a bridge (which is nice for embedded systems). 
> It has up to eight (8) SAS channels, and also does SATA
> natively.  Can't remember what the integrated SRAM buffering
> it (I think rather limited, maybe only 256KiB), but upto
> three (3) DDR SDRAM channels can be glued (768MiB).  IC cost
> is $60/unit in quantity.

Good to know.  Didn't know they had something ready for SAS.
Maybe SAS will become a reality shortly.