Makers of serial ATA (SATA) controller chips say business will boom in 2004. Recent announcements from Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT), Promise Technology Inc., RaidCore Inc., 3ware Inc., and VIA Technologies Inc. indicate that demand is growing for chips that give servers and workstations links to SATA disks, with RAID included.
These players say OEMs are clamoring for components that link from two to eight SATA drives to computer buses, while offering multilevel RAID protection. The combination is ideal for a roster of applications for servers or small storage devices. RAID-enabled SATA might be used to store medical images, video on demand, surveillance video in prisons or airports, images of checks and other financial documents, and the trendy compliance information corporations are squirreling away.
Announcements are flying. Next week, 3ware plans to unveil a controller that cuts down on the amount of cabling needed to link a computer's inner workings to SATA drives.
This week, Adaptec and Promise announced contracts with various motherboard suppliers (see Motherboard Makers Pick Adaptec and Promise Wins Motherboard Deals). VIA announced a serial ATA RAID controller for mobile PCs (see VIA Intros SATA RAID Controller).
All this builds on momentum surrounding SATA in general, as reflected in recent news from IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) (see IBM's SATA-Day Arrives). SATA already has respect as an alternative to tape storage or parallel ATA, the technique that initially emerged as a low-cost alternative to SCSI. But lately, the addition of RAID to SATA controllers -- along with proprietary features designed to improve performance -- makes the argument for SATA even more compelling, proponents say.
"Serial ATA is actually addressing emerging markets where SCSI is cost prohibitive. RAID is a key aspect of that," says Barbara Murphy, VP of marketing at 3ware. All of the vendors mentioned in this article offer RAID support on their SATA controllers.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
