SAS Starts to ROC

Led by Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM) and LSI Logic Corp. (NYSE: LSI), chip vendors are starting to deliver RAID-on-a-chip (ROC) controllers in time for the expected arrival of serial-attached SCSI (SAS) drives later this year (see Interoperability Lab Plugs SAS).

Broadcom demonstrated its first SAS ROC Feb. 28 at the Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC)
Developer Forum, and LSI Logic followed with a SAS ROC announcement last week (see Broadcom Offers SAS/SATA ROC and LSI Logic Stacks SAS ROC). Both have hopes of getting design wins with system OEMs that will show up in shipping products by the end of 2005.

Intel, Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT), Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) (Nasdaq: AMCC), PMC-Sierra Inc. (Nasdaq: PMCS), and Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq: VTSS) are likely to "ROC on" as well.

Though the ROC controllers are just coming out, there has been jockeying, by way of acquisitions and partnerships, in this space for years. It goes back at least to April 2003, when Intel and Emulex Corp. (NYSE: ELX) forged a joint development deal involving Intels low-power XScale processors to create controllers for Fibre Channel, SATA, and SAS (see Intel, Emulex Join at the Chip).

Other moves followed:

• Broadcom acquired startup RaidCore for $16.5 million in February 2004, giving it the technology for ROC and RAID-on-a-motherboard (ROM) (see Broadcom Raids SATA Startup).
• Last March, AMCC paid $150 million for SATA controller startup 3ware (see AMCC Buys More Storage).
• In January 2005, Adaptec formed a partnership with Vitesse to develop SAS ASICs (see Adaptec Posts $3.5M Loss). The companies said they will combine Vitesse’s 6-Gbit/s mixed signaling technology with Adaptec’s RAID and I/O expertise. Adaptec has since released a SCSI ROC controller, but no SAS ROC yet.