Paul Chu
Xilinx

RAID (redundant array of independent disks) technology has been widely adopted in systems with hard disks for protecting data, ensuring system availability, and improving system performance. Accusys has delivered many forms of RAID products, including the low-cost, high-performance ATA hardware RAID 5 solution.

To build next-generation eSATA RAID products supporting the 3-Gbps SATA2 standard, Accusys used a Xilinx Virtex-4 FX FPGA to implement the eSATA host interface controller as well as the RAID engine. This article explains the benefits of a 3-Gbps eSATA RAID solution and the role of the Virtex-4 FX FPGA.