New Haven, Connecticut – (Company press releas) — Cyclone Microsystems, Inc. today announced the CPCI-945 Ultra2 SCSI RAID Controller, a 6U CompactPCI RAID Controller that provides fault-tolerant storage and maximum data availability for high-performance embedded systems. Designed for a wide range of reliable storage systems where RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is required, the CPCI-945… offers OEMs an ideal opportunity to utilize RAID technology on a 64-bit CompactPCI bus. Cyclone's CPCI-945 intelligent RAID controller performs all RAID functions independent of the host processor. Intel's i960RN Intelligent I/O processor off loads the host processor by driving disk array controller functions like parity generation, RAID algorithms, striping algorithms and cache management. In addition, the CPCI-945 supports Microsoft Cluster Server for Windows NT environments.

Cyclone's CPCI-945 RAID Controller supports four Ultra2 (LVD) SCSI channels with up to 15 wide and 7 non-wide SCSI devices each. The board reaches a fast data transfer rate of up to 266 Mbytes/second across the PCI bus and up to 80 Mbytes/second across each LVD channel. Performance and fault tolerance are optimized with support for multiple RAID levels that allows system designers to select the desired combination of storage capacity, data availability (redundancy) and I/O transfer performance for any data application. The CPCI-945 supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 and 50. The firmware resides in Flash ROM and, when the system is started, the firmware is copied into and executed from ROM. The CPCI-945 supports disk caching with up to 128 Mbytes of SDRAM.

An integrated RAID management software package is also offered on the CPCI-945. The RAID utilities manage and configure the RAID system while MegaRAID creates and manages multiple disk arrays, controls and monitors multiple RAID servers and provides error statistics logging and online maintenance. The MegaRAID Self Monitoring Analysis and Recovery Technology (SMART) detects up to 70% of all predictable drive failures. Drive failures can be recovered through RAID remapping and online physical drive migration.

The CPCI-945 supports the Shared Disk Model of Microsoft Cluster Server for Windows NT clustering. There are two main components of the Cluster Server. The clustering software allows the two servers (nodes) of a cluster to pass specific kinds of messages that coordinate the transferring of resource operations in the event of failure detection. The cluster administrator is a graphical interface that is used to manage a cluster. The network/cluster administrator can create and control resources, control the failover and failback processes, specify resource and group properties affecting failover, control groups both online and offline and manually move groups from one node to another.

According to Peter Zackin, Cyclone's Vice President of Sales, “The use of disk storage in embedded applications is proliferating as storage reliability of the disk and intelligent RAID systems skyrocket. We are seeing an increased demand for applications as varied as transactional processing, telecommunications (AIN), imaging and video.” Designers working on any type of mission critical system requiring high-disk throughput can rely on and benefit from the advantages of RAID technology combined with Cyclone's 64-bit CompactPCI bus expertise.

Support for the CPCI-945 is available for all major PC server operating systems, including Windows NT, Novell NetWare, IBM OS/2, Sun Solaris, Red Hat Linux, SCO Unix and UnixWare. The board also supports industry standards for predicting drive failure and for management of non-SCSI devices in the server cabinet. The CPCI-945 permits broad peripheral connectivity with a wide range of SCSI devices such as CD-ROMs, tape drives, removable disks, magneto-optical juke boxes and scanners. The CPCI-945 RAID Controller is available for shipment in March 2000 for $1,627 (64 Mbytes SDRAM Q/ 1,000).

Cyclone Microsystems, Inc. is a leading designer and manufacturer of Intelligent I/O Controllers for CompactPCI, the PCI bus and the VMEbus. Since 1986, Cyclone has delivered high-performance I/O boards and systems for demanding embedded and real-time projects. Cyclone products are designed into diverse applications, including AIN (Advanced Intelligent Networks), telecommunication, video networking, data switching, industrial control and entertainment systems.

 
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