Product category:
Communications ICs (Wired)
News Release from: Agere Systems | Subject: NASn01
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 27 May 2005
Media servers accelerate network
attached storage
Agere Systems has developed what it reckons is the world's fastest portfolio of multimedia and storage networking chips for homes and businesses.
Agere Systems has developed what it reckons is the world's fastest portfolio of multimedia and storage networking chips for homes and businesses These trailblazing media server chips accelerate the speed at which multimedia files are transferred within homes and businesses approximately 20x faster than all competing chips
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Mar 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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Streaming multimedia content at 1Gbit/s datarates, the chips manage how digital content, such as data, music, pictures and video, get accessed and stored on a home or business network.
Designed for use in digital media server and network attached storage solutions, these chips can dramatically transform the new age of the digital home as well as the evolving needs of small- and medium-sized businesses.
Using equipment powered by these chips, for example, people inside a home can watch high definition TV (HDTV) on up to eight different TV sets simultaneously without any decline in performance - a benefit impossible with current single-chip offerings.
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Furthermore, a home user can expect the same level of backup, security and bandwidth they are used to in the corporate environment, at a cost and performance level unmatched in the industry.
This portfolio of chips is called NASn01 (network attached storage), in which n stands for the number of Serial Advance Technology Attachment Level 1 (SATA 1) hard disk drives the chips can support.
The portfolio includes four members: NAS 8xx (supports up to eight SATA1 drives), NAS4xx (supports up to four SATA 1drives), NAS2xx (supports up to two SATA 1 drives), and the NAS1xx (supports a single SATA 1 drive), This announcement coincides with next week's Computex Taipei 2005 trade show in Taiwan (Booth 104).
Media streaming technology from Digital 5 is embedded in these chips.
The NASn01 chips enable true high-speed performance through hardware chip acceleration rather than software-based implementations which seriously degrade streaming performance.
In addition to its 1Gbit/s speed benefit, key features include the ability to manage multiple streams (up to 64 concurrent sessions), content protection through RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, multiple hard disk drive (HDD) configurations (1, 2, 4, 8) for expandable storage capacity, and optional data security.
The Agere chips provide the ability to dynamically allocate bandwidth, protect the network, and store media and data content.
Inside the digital home, for example, these capabilities will make it possible for multiple people in the same house to simultaneously share, view and send digital entertainment content to and from a wide range of consumer equipment such as digital media servers, network-attached storage, PC storage/expansion and backup gear, routers, multi-user personal video recorders, network area servers, and audio servers.
Similarly, in business environments the amount of bandwidth and storage required is growing exponentially, and these Agere chips meet the needs of such requirements.
The NASn01 chips integrate two network interfaces: Gigabit Ethernet (10/100/1000) for high bandwidth local area network applications; and Universal Serial Bus 2.0 for connectivity to a wireless local area network.
The chips also house a multiport (1, 2, 4, 8) SATA-1 storage controller to interface with up to eight HDDs.
A high-performance, hardware-accelerated streaming RAID function, providing continuous operation if any one of the HDDs in the system fails, protects media content.
RAID recovery migration or expansion can occur without user intervention.
Hard coded within the chips - and a major hub of their "brainpower" - is a traffic management arbitrator (TMA) block that provides the "fast path" hardware acceleration from the HDD to the network interface.
This arbitrator schedules, controls and delivers stream-aware quality of service management to guarantee support for up to eight concurrent HDTV streaming sessions.
The arbitrator distinguishes between traffic that needs to be guaranteed to arrive on time versus traffic that can be delayed, and dynamically allocates bandwidth accordingly.
This traffic management capability, coupled with an embedded upper layer protocol accelerator, enables the chips to run efficiently with nonblocking bidirectional 1Gbit/s throughput.
"These chips are all about launching people into a new stratosphere of experiences and benefits in the digital technology age, due to massive improvements in speeds, bandwidths, convenience and versatility", said Necip Sayiner, Vice President of the Agere Systems Enterprise and Networking Division.
"And there's another key benefit: for years people have benefited from knowing that their valued digital media preservation at work is completely backed up and retrievable using their companies' networks".
"With these chips, people now can get that same advantage in their homes".
Agere is making available a complete evaluation platform that includes a chassis housing three SATA HDDs and the software stack for evaluation in both home and business applications.
This platform is architected for use with an embedded, open-use Linux operation system.
Using the open protocol of UPnP (Universal Plug-and-Play), integrated third-party middleware and the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard, it will provide interoperability with media client devices.
The continued growth in the amount of multimedia content in the home, including music, movies and pictures, has driven the need for cost-effective solutions for creating devices that can store and stream these files throughout the connected home.
The integration of Digital 5 software on the Agere chips will provide equipment manufacturers with a complete solution for network attached storage devices so consumers can store, manage and access digital music, pictures, and movies from anywhere in the home.
Devices enabled with this solution are capable of streaming WMA, MP3, AAC, LPCM audio files; and industry-standard video formats such as WMV, MPEG1, MPEG2, and MPEG4 smoothly and efficiently.
It can also render digital photo files stored in JPEG, TIFF, GIF or BMP-enabling slideshow presentation of photos delivered to the TV.
This new chips announcement builds on a November 2004 agreement announced by Agere and Digital 5.
Under the agreement, the companies are developing a complete hardware and software reference platform to help accelerate the time to market for products by original design manufacturers (ODMs) and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) addressing this attached storage market.
"As the amount of digital entertainment content continues to grow, the ability to store, manage and access that content across a home network is one of the most compelling benefits of our marketplace", said Mike Harris, President of Digital 5.
"We are pleased to be working with Agere to provide OEMs these trailblazing solutions to enable them to bring to market a compelling NAS consumer product for accessing content in the connected home".
The NASn01 chips are scheduled for general sample availability in July of this year.
They are priced at $36 in quantities of 1000.
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