SiI 4723 Features Easy RAID Configuration of Fast, Big, or Safe Modes, Providing Flexible and Easy to Use CE and Home Storage Solutions
The SiI 4723 enables OEMs and system integrators (SIs) to offer next generation plug-and-play, high-performance storage expansion solutions for price-sensitive, mass-market applications. The SiI 4723 can be configured for internal or external SATA (eSATA) applications where plug-and-play, reliable, high-performance data storage and backup are vital. Its versatility makes it suitable for the creation of easy to use, yet powerful storage appliances for home personal video recorders (PVRs), media centers, PCs, or home network attached storage (NAS) expansion. Its multiple features and unparalleled 120MB/s streaming performance make it suitable for prosumer drive expansion, small office/home office (SOHO), small and medium business (SMB), video editing and industrial data protection.
"The exploding volume of digital content is creating unprecedented storage requirements. Disk drives will fail over time and most users don't protect the valuable content on these drives because existing back-up solutions aren't user friendly or widely adopted," noted Jimmy Garcia-Meza, vice president, storage products business. "Silicon Image is a market leader in high- performance SATA, and the SiI 4723's easy RAID implementation addresses the needs for data protection through automatic mirroring, and/or high performance capacity expansion in a simple, plug-and-play device that is six times faster than USB and two times faster than 1394b."
"Consumers continue to store increasing amounts of digital data that are captured during once-in-a-lifetime events, such as weddings, graduations, and birthdays. Family memories are at risk of being lost unless this data is protected," said Dave Reinsel, director of storage research at IDC. "Companies such as Silicon Image that offer data protection technologies such as SteelVine, which enables professional, yet consumer-friendly RAID strategies, should find acceptance within a growing base of concerned consumers looking to protect their digital family archives."
SATA is becoming the de-facto standard for storage today. Until now, users have had to compromise performance on their external solutions by using SATA disk drives through slower, last generation USB or 1394 interfaces. eSATA and the SiI 4723 represent the new way of adding external storage with uncompromised 3Gb/s wire speed performance, consumer simplicity, and commodity pricing.
Product Features
The SteelVine storage architecture enables easy configuration of RAID modes depending on the user's storage needs. Capable of supporting up to one terabyte of storage using a single system-on-chip (SoC), the SiI 4723 supports Silicon Image's plug-and-play easy RAID including: data mirroring (RAID 1 or Safe mode); data striping (RAID 0 or Fast mode); drive spanning (concatenation or Big mode); and JBOD (or port multiplier mode). At the heart of the SiI 4723 is an embedded SteelVine Storage processor that executes the storage virtualization completely in hardware, eliminating CPU loading and maximizing application performance. As with all SteelVine architecture based solutions, the SiI 4723 does not require special drivers, BIOS settings, or RAID software on the host and is completely operating system independent. This provides storage systems manufacturers the ability to easily target devices with embedded operating systems such as set top boxes (STBs) or digital video recorders (DVRs), as well as any PC or device that runs a commercial operating system such as Windows, Linux or MAC OS X.
The SiI 4723 is designed to maximize uptime even in the face of a single drive failure. It supports auto rebuild, auto failover and hot-swap without the use of host resources, and at a speedy 100GB/hr, a mirrored drive set will be re-established quickly after a failed drive has been replaced. The SiI 4723 works with any SATA-compliant host port, although higher virtualization functionality is achievable when it is connected to a port multiplier-aware SATA host controller such as the SiI 3124(TM) or SiI 3132(TM).
Pricing and Availability
The SiI 4723 is sampling now and will be in production in Q4 2005 with a price of $15 in 10K quantities.
About Silicon Image
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Silicon Image, Inc. designs, develops and markets multi-gigabit semiconductor and system solutions for a variety of communications applications demanding high-bandwidth capability. With its proprietary Multi-layer Serial Link (MSL(TM)) architecture, Silicon Image is well positioned for leadership in multiple mass markets including PCs, consumer electronics and storage. Currently, Silicon Image is a leader in the global PC/display arena with its innovative digital interconnect technology, and has emerged as a leading player in the consumer electronics and storage markets by offering robust, high-bandwidth semiconductors. For more information on Silicon Image, visit www.siliconimage.com
Forward-looking Statements
This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities regulations. These forward-looking statements include statements related to the capabilities of the SteelVine storage architecture and the SiI 4723 product, to an anticipated increase in storage requirements, and to anticipated consumer usage of storage products and technologies. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including those described from time to time in Silicon Image's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. In particular, the capabilities of the SteelVine storage architecture and the SiI 4723 product, future storage requirements, and future consumer usage of storage products and technologies may differ materially from what is currently anticipated. Also see "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations-Factors Affecting Future Results" in the most recent Annual Report, Form 10-K or 10-Q filed by Silicon Image with the SEC. Silicon Image assumes no obligation to update this forward-looking information.
NOTE: Silicon Image, SteelVine, SiI, SiI 4723, SiI 3124, SiI 3132, MSL and www.siliconimage.com are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of Silicon Image, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
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