American Megatrends MegaRAID Express 500 - Manual (Page 15)

Chapter 1 Overview 1
1 Overview
The MegaRAID® Express 500 PCI RAID controller is a high performance
intelligent PCI-to-SCSI host adapter with RAID control capabilities. The
MegaRAID Express 500 provides reliability, high performance, and fault-
tolerant disk subsystem management. The MegaRAID Express 500 is part of the
American Megatrends Intel i960RM/RS-based MegaRAID controller family.
The MegaRAID Express 500 is an entry level-to mid-range RAID controller
solution. MegaRAID Express 500 offers a cost-effective way to implement
RAID in a server. The MegaRAID Express 500 has a 160 M Ultra and Wide
SCSI channel supporting data transfer rates up to 160 Megabytes per second
(MB/s) per channel. The SCSI channel supports up to fifteen non-Ultra SCSI
devices. MegaRAID Express 500 includes MegaRAID features and
performance.
Features MegaRAID Express 500 features include:
•
provides a high performance I/O migration path while preserving existing PCI-SCSI
software
•
Performs SCSI data transfers up to 160 MB/s
•
performs synchronous operation on a wide LVD SCSI bus
•
allows up to 15 LVD SCSI devices on the wide bus
•
includes an Intel® i960RM that performs RAID calculations and routing
•
supports 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 MB of SDRAM cache memory in a DIMM socket
used for read and write-back caching and RAID 5 parity generation
SCSI Channel The MegaRAID Express 500 upgrade card includes one Ultra3 SCSI channel.
The channel is powered by a Q-Logic ISP10160A 160M SCSI processor.
NVRAM and Flash ROM A 32 KB x 8 NVRAM stores RAID system configuration information.
The MegaRAID Express 500 firmware is stored in flash ROM for easy upgrade.
SCSI Connectors MegaRAID Express 500 has one ultra high density 68-pin external connector
for external storage subsystem and one high density 68-pin internal connector.