Fibre Channel controller targets high-performance storage

PMC-Sierra Inc. has announced the PM8032 Tachyon QE8 Fibre Channel protocol controller for high-performance networked storage systems.

The Tachyon QE8 combines four ports of 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel with eight lanes of 5Gbit/s PCIe 2.0 bandwidth. The Tachyon QE8 achieves up to 6.4GBps throughput and greater than 1.4 million I/Os per second (IOPS) performance. The QE8 leverages a Tachyon State Machine architecture that combines low latency with a high level of system performance and scalability.

The QE8 integrates a host of advanced features, including native eight-lane PCIe 2.0 Gen-II 5Gbit/s bus; multi-DMA to enable system cache mirroring with minimal CPU overhead; frame steering for hardware assisted virtualization; multi-CPU support to extend processor scalability and to allow special frame handling within a single Fibre Channel port. The QE8 supports the T-10 Standard "Protection Information" via ADIF (Advanced Data Integrity Field) to ensure complete integrity in the I/O data path.

The Tachyon QE8 is fully interoperable with PMC-Sierra's family of 4Gbits/s Fibre Channel products, and can be combined with its SAS/Serial ATA protocol controllers and expanders.

PMC-Sierra provides a comprehensive Tachyon Software Development kit (TSDK), including source code and drivers, to significantly reduce firmware development time and accelerate time to market.

Devices will be available in Q1 08 in a Pb-free 480-pin FC PBGA package using 90nm CMOS technology.

- Ismini Scouras
eeProductCenter