PMC’s 12Gb/s SAS controllers and expanders set performance and density records for cloud and tiered storage

SUNNYVALE, USA: PMC-Sierra Inc. announced the availability of its 12Gb/s SAS protocol controllers, RAID-on-Chip (RoC) controllers and expanders to enable breakthrough performance and scalability for server and networked storage.

High-performance solid state drives (SSDs) can deliver up to 100 times more I/Os per second (IOPS) than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), creating the need for a new class of storage controller. PMC’s 12Gb/s SAS controllers are optimized for performance to solve this need and release the full potential of SSDs. With the addition of the industry’s highest port count expanders, PMC’s 12Gb/s solution delivers 40 percent more drive connectivity than competitive solutions, enabling a new generation of scalable tiered storage for corporate and cloud data centers.

“Building on the market leadership of our 6Gb/s SAS products, PMC is pleased to announce the availability of the industry’s leading 12Gb/s controller and expander products,” said Derek Dicker, VP of marketing for PMC’s Enterprise Storage Division. “With the most advanced integration and the highest performance available, our customers can design systems that scale with the exponential growth in storage data at the lowest cost and power.”

Demonstrations of PMC’s Tachyon 12Gb/s SAS controllers have delivered well over two million IOPS with a single 16-port controller running small block sequential reads connected to 6Gb/s SAS drives via PMC SAS expanders. PMC’s controllers provide more than double the performance of competing 12Gb/s SAS controllers, which enables OEM storage solutions to fully harness the capabilities of the latest SSDs and improve the performance of large-scale HDD topologies.

PMC’s 16-port controller provides twice the port density than competitive solutions. Combined with PMC’s 68-port SXP 12G expander, OEMs can double overall storage system capacity, while reducing components and saving board real estate and power. PMC’s expanders have 40 percent more SAS ports and can scale to support double the number of drives than competitive products, enabling customers to build solutions that span from entry-level to high-end markets. 12Gb/s SAS provides the increased throughput needed for these scale-out architectures.