6Gb/s SATA Controllers Power Next-Generation Motherboards

6Gb/s SATA Controllers Power Next-Generation Motherboards providing advanced data protection and double the storage interface

Marvell is famed for its industry leading end-to-end storage products across its portfolio of host controller ICs, hard disk controller ICs, solid drive controller ICs, expanders, port multipliers, storage protocol converters and RAID-on-motherboard solutions. By offering a comprehensive set of SAS/SATA storage building blocks, best-in-class technologies and assured interoperability at affordable costs, Marvell has achieved supplier-of-choice status with many PC, Server and Storage OEMs.

Marvell’s latest success concerns its 88SE91XX series, 6Gb/s SATA controllers: Recent announcements confirm that the device will  ship in ASUSTek’s new P6X58D Premium and P7P55D-E series motherboards and in GIGABYTE’s INTEL GA-P55A, GA-X58A and AMD GA-790FXTA motherboards, further confirming the technological advantages the company delivers in terms of performance, advanced data protection and interoperability in next generation consumer desktop and laptop applications. Thanks to Marvell’s development of the industry's first serial ATA revision 3.0 solution, these new motherboards feature advanced AES 256 bit data encryption and a blazing fast Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/s interface performance that will amaze end-users.

According to CheWei Lin, General Manager of ASUSTek’s Motherboard Business Unit,  the ASUS P7P55D Premium is the first motherboard to natively support 6Gbps data transfer bandwidth: “ With this expansion bridge, the P7P55D Premium unleashes the performance potential of the latest hard disk drives, achieving almost double the throughput from existing SATA compatible drives," said Lin.  "We chose the Marvell 6Gb/s SATA controller for its unique ability to deliver superfast 6Gbps link speeds for twice the 3 Gbps data transfer rates of SATA Revision 2.6."

GIGABYTE is the first motherboard manufacturer to utilize Marvell's 6Gb/s SATA controller with RAID0 functionality on a wide range of both Intel and AMD based motherboards, including the GA-P55A, GA-X58A and GA-700A series: "The versatility of the Marvell solution enables us to offer our customers a complete range of top-to-bottom solutions – each offering the industry's highest 6Gb/s bandwidth with the added bonus of RAID0 for up to four times the data transfer speed of SATA Revision 2.0.", said Henry Kao, Vice President of the Motherboard Business Unit at GIGABYTE.

In addition to powering the latest products from ASUSTek and GIGABYTE, Marvell has also collaborated with other motherboard vendors like ASRock, MSI, and 6Gb/s SATA hard disk drive and solid-state drive vendors to further proliferate 6Gb/s SATA adoption within the industry.

Micron and Marvell have worked together for several years optimizing the SSD controller to enable the true performance of NAND. The companies collaborated with ASUSTek and GIGABYTE to demonstrate the blazing fast SATA 6Gb/s storage solution at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas: “The performance numbers achieved using the RealSSD C300 far exceeds the competition, and set a new standard for next generation, high performance computing devices", said Dean Klein, Vice President of Memory System Development at Micron 

For more information on the Marvell storage building blocks, please visit Marvell website at www.marvell.com.