New chip for RAID controllers

American Megatrends, a manufacturer of motherboards and electronic components, says it will use a new chip from Intel in its line of RAID controllers, resulting in increased performance in data storage operations.

RAID, or Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, is a technology that writes to several disks simultaneously. AMI will incorporate the recently announced i960 RD I/O chip in its MegaRAID products, the company said. The new chip replaces an older I/O chip from Intel, which is claimed to have twice the performance of its predecessor.

The i960RD chip handles input-output, or I/O. In the case of the MegaRAID controllers, I/O processing involves the sending and receiving of data from the hard drive subsystem. By taking over these tasks, the chip frees the main processor, such as a Pentium Pro, to handle the operations--thereby speeding overall server performance.

AMI says that use of the new chip for RAID controllers also speeds I20 operations. The I20 specification is a new technology for increasing the performance of servers.