Microchip introduces a new RAID adapter that improves performance by more than 60%

     To meet cloud, enterprise, and workstation customers' requirements for entry-level hardware RAID robustness and performance, Microchip Technology announced the Adaptec SmartRAID 3100E RAID Adapter. Designed to provide reliable hardware RAID protection for customer data in cost-sensitive end applications.

     Compared to Microchip's previous generation Adaptec 8E series, the SmartRAID 3100E delivers more than 60% performance improvements and 40% power reduction. The Adaptec SmartRAID 3100E series is part of Microchip's existing production release PCIe Gen 3 SAS-3/SATA SmartRAID 3100 adapter family. The new SmartRAID 3100E adapter is ideal for systems looking to achieve application acceleration with cache support and entry level enterprise RAID data protection without the added cost of cache protection or advanced RAID level full-featured RAID adapters.

     Andrew Dieckmann, assistant vice president of Microchip's Data center Solutions business group, said: "The SmartRAID 3100E entry-level adapter provides a migration path designed to help users who want to transition from a software RAID solution or a traditional entry-level hardware RAID solution to Microchip's proven smart storage stack. Offering 1 or 2 GB of built-in DRAM cache, these adapters offer significant performance gains and lower power consumption compared to previous generations, making them ideal for 4K random read/write workloads."

     The entry-level SmartRAID 3100E RAID adapter is ideal for applications such as compute and graphics applications, edge computing and storage nodes, and industrial and manufacturing servers. For these applications, enterprises and cloud service providers now have the option to update the widely used Adaptec 6E series and RAID Adapter 8E series to the smart storage platform and benefit from unified drivers, firmware and management tools for the entire smart storage family.