Six gig SAS silicon shown off

THERE WERE TWO really interesting things at the SAS trade association booth, SAS 6G silicon and expanders. I want both, and a bunch of 15K drives to use on them of course. [I want never gets, Ed.]

The above chip is the first of many, a 6Gbps SAS chip by PMC-Sierra. The SAS 2.0 or whatever it ends up being called is not finalized, so things may change a bit. The simple fact that there is now working silicon sampling to test against is quite encouraging. This is a big first step.

The other thing all over the bothy were SAS expanders. These take one port and multiply it to more, how many more is really up to you. They range from about 4 to the PM8398 SXP 36 port expander you see here. That should be enough for most. µ