IP package puts Serial Attached SCSI on chip

Ceva-SAS is a comprehensive new solution for implementing Serial Attached SCSI in SoC designs.

Ceva, the leading licensor of digital signal processor (DSP) cores, multimedia, GPS and storage platforms to the semiconductor industry, today unveiled Ceva-SAS, a comprehensive solution for implementing Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) in SoC designs.

Building on Ceva's success and experience in the Serial ATA (SATA) market and its proven expertise in delivering IP solutions, the company's latest offering represents the first open-foundry commercial offering of an IP solution for this rapidly emerging serial storage interface.

The full-featured high-quality IP package reduces the risk and time required to implement SAS in an integrated IC design, eliminating the need for a stand-alone chip to perform this function.

Serial interfaces are poised to rapidly overtake their parallel predecessors in the storage interface market.

This is true both in consumer applications where SATA is evolving as the interface of choice, and in enterprise storage where SAS is taking the SCSI interface to new levels of flexibility, scalability, performance and reliability.

In addition to leveraging the enormous installed base of SCSI software, a key facet of Serial Attached SCSI is that it is compatible with SATA, which enables an enterprise storage system to mix and match SAS and SATA hard drives.

This flexibility gives SAS-enabled products a compelling advantage in the dynamic and ever-changing world of enterprise storage.

"SAS will offer backward-compatibility with legacy SCSI data protocols and forward physical backplane compatibility with SATA, combined with enhanced dual-ported speed and scalability for emerging enterprise applications", said John Monroe, a Research Vice President at Gartner.

"We have no doubt that SAS will be the legitimate heir to parallel SCSI, which will disappear entirely during the next five years".

"Semiconductor and storage system vendors should co-ordinate the timely design and integration of new products with the assumption that SAS will be the dominant hard disk drive interface in multi-user markets, with a forecast share of 47.6% in 2009".

Ceva-SAS is a complete hardware/software solution for integrating SAS into a storage IC, spanning from an API interface at the customer's RAID stack software down to the physical serial interface at the wire.

The solution is offered in a flexible integration format that allows customers to license the entire solution or just the protocol or PHY elements.

The comprehensive list of features includes support for both initiator and target modes, SCSI SBC-2 end-to-end protection (DIF), narrow/wide ports, scalable context management, enhanced open/close/retry connection management.

Further, employing the mature and die-efficient Ceva-TeakLite-II DSP core for executing the associated embedded software, Ceva-SAS delivers a highly optimised solution for integration, with significant work offloaded from the I/O processor.

"The comprehensive package of hardware and software IP available with Ceva-SAS has drawn very favourable reviews from a number of storage OEMs", said John Ryan, VP and General Manager of the Communications Business Unit, Ceva "By extending our serial storage portfolio with this IP, Ceva will enable our customers to develop feature-rich, SAS-enabled products without incurring the time and risk associated with implementing this complex standard from scratch".

"SAS represents a significant market opportunity for both storage OEMs and semiconductor suppliers who can offer that functionality", said John Webster, Senior Analyst and founder of Data Mobility Group.

"In addition to its performance and scalability benefits, its compatibility with other serial interfaces, such as SATA, will only enhance its position as a very viable replacement for parallel SCSI in enterprise solutions".

"Any technology that can reduce the risk, cost and development time for product developers in this market is worth evaluating as this will be a very competitive space in the storage industry".

The Ceva-SAS IP package includes GDSII for the PHY element, Verilog-RTL for the hardware elements of the protocol and C code for the associated software.

A demonstration system showing Ceva-SAS IP interoperating with a number of industry-standard SAS hard disk drives is available for customer evaluation and demo, as is SASTool test software for PC, running on Windows 2000 or later.

It is supported with a full set of customisation, integration and deployment services.

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