PC4-PRESTO • CompactPCI
®
PlusIO • 4
th
Generation Intel
®
Core™-4xxx Processor
Serial ATA Interface (SATA)
The PC4-PRESTO provides a total of eigth serial ATA (SATA) ports, derived from two independent
SATA controllers. A SATA controller is located within the QM87 Platform Controller Hub that holds 4
SATA interfaces and in a separate SATA host controller Marvell 88SE9230, providing four SATA ports,
all 6Gbps capable.
The QM87 ports are fed to the high speed expansion connector P-HSE. This connector allows the
installation of low profile expansion boards like C41-CFAST or C42-SATA to attach the popular CFast
cards or Micro SATA SSDs (1.8-inch) respectively. Another mezzanine is the C47-MSATA, a carrier for
two MSATA SSD modules.
The Marvell 88SE9230 is an SATA 6Gbps AHCI/RAID I/O controller connected via two PCI Express lanes
(1GB/s) to the QM87. It supports hardware RAID levels 0, 1 and 10. All of its SATA ports are used to
supply the CompactPCI
®
PlusIO SATA interfaces on the backplane or rear I/O module via the J2 UHM
connector.
Please note, that the CompactPCI
®
PlusIO specification refers to SATA data rates of
1.5Gbps and 3Gbps. EKF has tested successfully also 6G over the backplane with sample devices, but
cannot guarantee this data rate under any condition. Other devices and other backplane brands/types
in use may cause a different result. Hence, for optimum reliability, the Marvell SATA controller will be
initialized for 3Gbps on all ports by default. The J2 backplane SATA 6Gbps configuration would be
available however as a PC4-PRESTO option on special request (altered content for the Marvell
88SE9230 attached SPI Flash). EKF recommends that customers validate their particular SATA 6G
application thoroughly, since SATA channel data errors can decrease the performance considerably.
A LED named HD located in the front panel, signals disk activity status of any QM87 SATA devices
(green) or 88SE9230 devices (yellow).
Additionally a variety of side cards is available, suitable for mounting on the PC4-PRESTO in a 4HP
(20.32mm) distance (resulting in 8HP front panel width for the assembly). Some of these side boards
can accommodate a SATA drive, e.g. a 2.5-inch SSD.
Available for download from Intel's web site are drivers for popular operating systems, e.g. Windows
®
7, Windows
®
8 and Linux.
Drivers and software to manage the RAID configuration of the 88SE9230 (Windows
®
application) is
provided by Marvell and can be downloaded from EKF’s website.
© EKF -26- ekf.com
