CeBIT 2008: Areca Unified Serial Controller with integrated SAS-Expander

Areca, a Taiwanese company specializing in high-end controller cards, is displaying a few new products aimed at small and mid-sized businesses as well as freelancers at CeBIT.

Although the ARC-1680 line of RAID controllers isn't really new, it did gain a few family members. The new flagship model ARC-1680ix offers between eight and 24 (!!) SAS ports by integrating an SAS expander directly in the controller card. Normally, SAS-storage devices are attached using an SFF-8087 multi-lane cable (with four lanes per physical connection). However, in the case of very compact storage solutions that house numerous drives within a host system, Areca's highly integrated approach makes sense.

The ix-models are based on Intel's IOP348 chip and run at a clock speed of 1200 MHz, ensuring sufficient performance in RAID 5 and RAID 6 arrays. Other RAID modes such as RAID 0, 1, and Nested RAID 30, 50 and 60 are supported as well. The feature list is quite lengthy, so its best to check it out directly at www.areca.com.tw or in Hall 2 at stand A3.

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