PRESS RELEASE
October 2015, Milpitas CA –For the past 20 years, HighPoint has been a professional RAID Storage and Management solutions provider, constantly striving to bring quality product to market and deliver the industry’s best Price-Performance value.
While Skylake based motherboards unquestionably deliver the blazing performance demanded by today’s PC enthusiast and resource-hungry applications, these designs often sacrifice storage connectivity and expansion capability for raw speed and processing power. HighPoint believes that customers should not have to trade storage connectivity for raw performance. Our Rocket and RocketRAID Series PCIe Controller cards represent Industry’s most versatile and affordable SAS and SATA storage expansion solutions, and are ideally suited for Intel’s new Skylake motherboard platforms.
Understanding the PCH limitations of the Intel Skylake and 100 series chipset
Intel’s new Skylake motherboards utilize revolutionary NVMe technology to introduce next generation SSD’s to consumer and commercial platforms. NVMe SSD’s utilize the PCIe3.0 host interface, which provides considerably more transfer bandwidth than conventional SAS/SATA interfaces. However, upon closer examination of new Skylake motherboard specifications, the new design’s limitations become readily apparent; to truly take advantage of NVMe’s exciting performance potential, you must sacrifice SATA port connectivity when using NVMe SSD’s.
Intel Skylake utilizes high-speed input/output technology (HSIO) to provide more flexibility for device connectivity and expansion. The 100 Series chipset PCH utilizes the new DMI 3.0 Gen3 connection. Compared to DMI 2.0, the connection speed between the CPU and Chipset has increased by 40%; from 5GT/s (2GB/s sec) to 8GT/s (3.93GB/ sec).Although DMI 3.0 greatly increases bandwidth, the number of available PCIe lanes is still insufficient for the multiple type of devices and PCIe expansion support customers expect and need from most motherboards. The diagram makes it clear that the 100 chipset series is actually a staggered option for PCIe SSD and SATA storage devices. Motherboards that utilize this design only provide 1 or 2 SATA ports when one PCIex4 SSD is installed. However, without a PCIe SSD installed, all 6 SATA port are available to the user.
RocketRAID Controllers: Simple & Versatile SATA Storage Solution for RAID and Connectivity
HighPoint PCIe SAS/SATA controller cards allow customers to overcome the storage expansion limitations of the new Skylake platform. Rocket and RocketRAID HBA’s were designed to deliver the industry’s most versatile and comprehensive selection of port connectivity options; to 40 internal/external and hybrid SAS/SATA channels for RAID and JBOD configurations. HighPoint offers comprehensive software and driver support for all major operating system platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.
Each RocketRAID controller includes a comprehensive and user friendly RAID management solution, which allows customers to quickly and easily configure SAS or SATA storage devices for maximum performance or mass storage capability. RocketRAID storage configurations are self-contained, and can operate independently and along size the IZ170’s integrated RST for PCIe M.2 SSDs.
Rocket and RocketRAID HBA Solutions:
- AHCI Compliance HBA Solution: Rocket 600L Series
- Combined USB 3.0 Port + eSATA Port Solution: RocketU 1144E
- Massive SATA Port Count Solutions – Rocket 750 , RocketRAID 274x, RocketRAID 2760A Series
- Cost Efficient SATA RAID 5 Solutions – RocketRAID 600L , RocketRAID 6xx, RocketRAID 272x Series
- Hardware RAID SATA / SAS Solution – RocketRAID 4500 and RocketRAID 3600 Series
Why Choose HighPoint?
HighPoint was founded in 1995. For the past 20 years, we’ve dedicated ourselves towards the design, manufacture and deployment of quality RAID HBA’s and RAID Storage Management Solutions. Our devoted team of experienced hardware and software engineers bring years of Storage RAID technology expertise to SAS, SATA, Thunderbolt ™ and USB storage and connectivity applications.
HighPoint strives to bring high-performance, quality storage and connectivity solutions to the marketplace at the industry’s best prices. We firmly believe that you do not have to sacrifice performance, versatility or reliability for affordability.
RocketStor–High-Performance, Reliable, and Affordable Connectivity & Storage Solutions
We specialize in cost/Performance oriented product design, development and manufacture, and continuously work to improve our products based on direct feedback from our valued customers. Over the years, we have forged strong alliances and technology partnerships with industry-leading storage providers, which enable us to quickly deliver Thunderbolt™, Mini-SAS, SATA and USB Connectivity and storage devices to the global marketplace.
