Si
I
4723
SATA to 2-Port 3Gb/s SATA
SteelVine Storage Processor
Building on the proven SteelVine
™
Storage Architecture, the Sil 4723
™
provides a new
level of affordable storage. The SiI 4723 provides 3Gb/s SATA performance over
the single host SATA link as well as the dual device SATA links, and can be configured
for internal or external (eSATA) applications. Until now, transfer rates of 3Gb/s and
hardware RAID features were only available to enterprise class applications. SiI 4723
allows OEMs and system integrators to offer high-end features for price-sensitive
mass market applications.
Users of the SiI 4723 eliminate CPU loading by using the embedded RISC SteelVine
storage processor. This innovative new technology provides approximately 6 times
performance of USB 2.0 and approximately two times the performance of 1394b.
The SiI 4723 embedded RISC storage processor was developed by Silicon Image and
tuned for the needs of storage applications.This storage processor completely frees up
the main CPU and provides the enhanced RAID mode completely from hardware.
The device can be strapped in a single mode configuration to provide reliable data
mirroring, data performance striping, or just plain capacity expansion.
The SiI 4723 modes are: 1) SAFE or Data Mirroring (RAID 1) – allows device to
automatically copy primary hard drive without any CPU loading. The SiI 4723 provides
automatic rebuild on device replacement and auto-failover, to eliminate any workflow
interruptions. 2) FAST or Data Striping (RAID 0) – allows the device to performance
stripe the drives, to provide maximum throughput to the direct attached PC/Server.
3) BIG or Drive Spanning – allows the device to make any two drives (same or
different sizes) appear as one large drive to the host, for extra capacity (also called
concatenation). 4) JBOD or Port Multiplier — this allows the direct attached PC/Server
to see each drive as single drives (PM mode requires a host that is PM-aware.)
The SiI 4723 works with any Serial ATA compliant host port, although more function-
ality is supported when it is connected to a Port Multiplier Aware host controller
such as SiI 3124
™
or SiI 3132
™
. For more details, please contact your local Silicon Image
sales representative.
FDD
Power
Host
SATA Port
Applications
•
External Storage
Enclosures
•
Backup Systems
•
Embedded CE Applications
•
Video Editing Systems
•
Nearline DAS Storage
•
Protected SOHO/SMB
Storage
Regulators
EEPROM
Si
I
3124
3Gb/s
Si
I
4723
SATA to
2-Port
SATA Storage
Processor
3Gb/s
Secondary
Port B
3Gb/s
Secondary
Port A
System Status
GPIOs
LEDs
SILICONIMAGE [ Silicon image ]
