VIA Serial ATA RAID Controllers

The Serial ATA interface symbolizes one of the most important advances to date for storage technology. With faster speeds than any previous IDE interface, more efficient cabling, and optimization for integration into servers and networked storage environments, Serial ATA has not only rendered Parallel ATA obsolete, but is also scalable and will allow for the future development of the PC. With two Serial ATA RAID Controllers that offer cost-effective solutions in flexible single-chip packages, VIA is a powerful force in promoting the Serial ATA industry standard.

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More About Serial ATA RAID

Serial ATA
Serial ATA is the next generation of storage connectivity that brings a number of benefits, such as a significantly reduced size of Serial ATA cable, allowing for easier installation and improved airflow within the system case, which is particularly important in a more compact chassis as well as greater data integrity and greater data transfer bandwidth of up to 150MB/s.

Serial ATA also enables a reduced connector pin count, with only seven pins versus the forty pins required for an IDE interface. Serial ATA brings a reduction in controller chip power consumption compared to Parallel ATA, thus lowering the voltage interface-signaling requirement and enabling reduced die size.

As the PC industry migrates towards Serial ATA as the standard drive interface, VIA is at the forefront of developing leading solutions to enable the transition.

RAID
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a new approach to storage configuration that harnesses the power of multiple hard drives working together, and uses advanced data striping and mirroring techniques to improve data integrity and access speed. Disk arrays are groups of disk drives that work together to achieve higher data-transfer and I/O rates than those provided by single large drives, with a specialized controller (an array controller) keeping track of how data is distributed across the drives.

In Striping, data for a particular file is written in segments to the different drives in the array rather than being written to a single drive, and Mirroring ensures no data is lost if a single drive (physical disk) in the array should fail. Different RAID 'levels' offer varying benefits to users, for example RAID Level 0 significantly increases hard drive read/write speeds, while RAID Level 1 provides rock solid data integrity.

As with many other advances in PC technology, VIA is leading the way for industry transitions by providing advanced functionality and yet cost-effective solutions to our customers.