Product Brief
SiI5744
SteelVine
™
Storage Processor
Storage processor with embedded USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces
• Storage appliances
• CE storage devices
• External storage
Applications
The SiI5744 is a low-cost, single-chip solution for digital home and small office storage
appliances. This SteelVine Storage Processor connects a USB 2.0 or 3 Gbps eSATA host
port to two 3 Gbps eSATA Gen2m device ports. Features of the SiI5744 include
advanced RAID modes, drive locking, and single-button backup. Extensive software
developer kits are available from Silicon Image to simplify product differentiation.
enclosures
Key Features
• eSATA and USB 2.0
host ports
All of the SATA ports on the SiI5744 comply with
the 3 Gbps eSATA specification, making this semi-
conductor suitable for use in both internal and
external applications. The SiI5744 features propri-
etary eSATA based capacity expansion, which
allows users to easily grow the capacity of an
existing SteelVine enabled device by adding addi-
tional drives. The new drives will appear to the
host system as additional space in the existing
SteelVine volume.
The SiI5744 also features drive locking, which
helps protect users' data by allowing them to
password lock directly attached and cascaded
drives. If a locked drive is detached from its
assigned computer or cascade, the data on the
drive will be inaccessible until it is reconnected
and unlocked with the user supplied password. In
addition, the SiI5744 supports single-button
backup through third-party applications for sim-
ple and worry-free data protection.
SiI5744 supports JBOD and the following RAID
modes: FAST (RAID 0), SAFE (RAID 1) and BIG
(Concatenation) as well as two new modes,
SAFE50 and SAFE33. SAFE50 creates two vol-
umes across two drives, with half of each physical
drive being allocated to each volume. One volume
is in SAFE mode (RAID 1) and the other is in BIG
(Concatenated) mode. SAFE33 also creates two
volumes, but with 1/3 of physical space being ded-
icated to SAFE mode and 2/3 to BIG mode. These
modes offer a balance between protection of criti-
cal data and maximization of space for non-criti-
cal data. The SiI5744 allows RAID mode
configuration through a GUI, strap pins, or I
2
C
for true software-free implementations.
Which RAID modes are supported depends on the
way drives are connected to the storage processor.
When adding two drives to the SiI5744, BIG,
FAST, SAFE, JBOD, SAFE50 and SAFE33 are sup-
ported. When drives are cascaded, BIG and SAFE
are available.
• eSATA capacity
expansion
• Drive locking
• Backup button
• RAID modes: FAST
(RAID 0), SAFE
(RAID 1), BIG
(Concatenation),
SAFE50 & SAFE33,
JBOD
SiI5744 System Diagram
SILICONIMAGE [ Silicon image ]
