Single- and dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI host bus adapters for the Mac are now available from the storage-infrastructure specialists at ATTO Technology, and LSI Logic Corp., a designer and manufacturer of communications, consumer and storage semiconductors.
LSI Logic’s Ultra320 SCSI controllers, the LSI53C1020 and LSI 53C1030, use Fusion-MPT (Message Passing Technology) architecture to deliver double the data-transfer speed of current Ultra160 SCSI technology, according to Dave Snell, chief technology officer for ATTO. Snell indicated that the ATTO ExpressPCI UL4S and UL4D SCSI HBAs is suited for digital audio/video, Web authoring, prepress and video streaming.
ATTO Technology products with LSI Logic architecture are the first Mac-platform Ultra320 SCSI HBAs to be introduced and ship in production volumes, Snell said. The ATTO Express PCI UL4D/S Ultra320 SCSI HBAs provide Mac users with features like packetized SCSI, Quick Arbitration Select (QAS), pre-compensation techniques, and flow control that allow data to be transferred faster.
Packetized SCSI transfers grouped commands, messages and status bytes at full data-transfer speeds, reducing the protocol overhead. Even better, packetization allows the transfer of several commands or data from multiple I/O processes in a single connection. By eliminating bus free time, QAS reduces the device selection time and bus arbitration, Snell said.
The UL4S/UL4D HBAs will incorporate 64-bit/133 MHz PCI-X functionality while retaining backward compatibility with earlier SCSI versions. This means your existing peripheral devices won’t be orphaned.