Intel® RAID Adapters RSP3TD160, RSP3MD088, RSP3DD080 and RSP3WD080 Hardware User Guide
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2.4.2
SATA III Features
The SAS interface is compatible with SATA and it has the following characteristics.
•
Supports the following:
o
SATA III data transfers up to 6Gb/s.
o
STP data transfers up to 6Gb/s.
•
Provides a serial, point-to-point storage interface.
•
Simplifies cabling between devices.
•
Eliminates the master-slave construction used in parallel ATA.
•
Permits addressing of multiple SATA targets through an expander.
2.4.3
NVMe Interface Features
The new NVMe interface has the following characteristics.
•
Supports the following:
o
Data transfers of 8Gb/s per lane (32 Gb/s when 4 PCIe lanes are being used).
o
PCI Bus Power Management Interface Specification,
Revision 1.2
.
o
Active State Power Management, states, by placing links in a power-saving mode
during times of no link activity.
•
Supports PCIe Hot Plug.
•
Supports error handling.
•
Provides high bandwidth per pin with low overhead and low latency.
•
Supports lane reversal and polarity inversion.
2.4.4
Usability Features
The Tri-Mode RAID adapters have the next usability characteristics.
•
Drives spin-up sequencing control.
•
Provides one (1) LED signal to indicate link activity for all PHYs for the the drive activity LED on
the chassis.
•
Supports the internal SAS sideband signal SFF-8485 (SGPIO) interface.
Note:
LED signals indicate an error condition or drive activity. RAID adapters support several blink patterns for
these LEDs, depending on the user configuration and storage enclosure. For information about the LED blink
patterns, contact the storage enclosure manufacturer.
2.4.5
Flexibility Features
The Tri-Mode RAID adapters have the next flexibility characteristics.
•
Flash ROM interface, a non-volatile static RAM (NVSRAM) interface.
•
Flexible programming interface to tune I/O performance.
•
Permit mixed connections to SAS targets or SATA III targets.
•
Leverage-compatible connectors for SAS connections and SATA III connections.
•
Permit grouping of up to eight (8) PHYs into a single SAS-wide port.
•
Permit programming of the World Wide Name.
2.4.6
Drive Roaming
Drive roaming occurs when once a VD is already set up, some or all of the drives that are part of this VD are
manually changed to different ports on the same adapter. When this happens, the adapter detects the RAID
configuration from the configuration data on the drives.
Configuration data is saved in both the NVRAM on the RAID adapter and on the drives attached to the adapter.
This feature maintains the integrity of the data on each drive, even if the drives have changed their physical
device ID. More information on how to use the drive roaming feature can be found on the Intel® RAID Software
User Guide for full featured and entry level RAID adapters.
