peripheral controllers

Revolution 3-Port RAID SATA Storage Processor for Home Multmedia Revo64 is a new family of ATA and Serial-ATA storage accelerator PCI adapter cards based upon the Revolution storage processor from Netcell Corporation. The Revo64 storage accelerator card features a revolutionary new 64-bit RAID engine, offering for the first time a mainstream storage processing solution with the simultaneous benefits of both RAID 0-class performance and RAID 5-class data protection.

Revo64 is specifically designed to overcome the limitations of traditional RAID technology and provide a solution for today's demanding storage environments, offering the fastest a Serial ATA storage performance for bandwidth-intensive desktop, workstation, and media server applications. Revo64 delivers high-end performance with low-cost drives, while providing enterprise-class security for data and content.

The Storage Processing Unit (SPU)
Netcell’s® state-of-the-art Revolution storage processing unit (SPU) revolutionizes storage processing by creating a solution that not only streamlines the storage process, but also increases overall PC performance. The Revolution SPU is a highly intelligent, true plug-and-play storage processor. It seamlessly grows storage capacity, and most important, practically eliminates the chance of losing data from hard drive failure —all with simple auto-configuration technology.

Netcell Revolution Storage Processor
Netcell’s Revolution storage processors do more than just protect against drive failure. Think of it as your computer’s 3rd brain. Netcell’s Revolution SPU functions as the computer’s third brain, conducting a myriad of tasks without tying up or disrupting the function of the CPU. The SPU works in the background, continuously creating back-up files without users having to hit "back-up" as they work. And, not only does the SPU create a back-up of all of the files created, it allows users to continue to work—without any loss in performance—in the event of a drive failure. A back-up drive can’t do any of that.

Unlimited Capacity At Your Fingertips
Adding more storage has never been easier! The Revolution SPU (storage processing unit) not only allows you to quickly double your storage capacity, it also doubles performance. To add capacity, simply plug your exisitng hard drive into a Netcell Revolution storage processor-based card and then attach two additional hard drives. The Revolution SPU automatically stretches your data across all three drives using advanced data migration technology. Your computer will appear unchanged except it will have more free drive space and your data will be fully protected against hard drive failure. The Netcell Revolution storage processor makes adding new hard drives a snap because there are no drivers needed—once your hard drive is attached, it is instantly accessible. In fact, existing data can easily be spread across new drive arrays without the need to reinstall the operating system. This makes it easy for users to add storage space to an already working computer without having to move the data first or reinstall the operating system.

Driverless Design Means No Complex Drivers to Install
Users need simply connect the hard drives, turn the machine on, and install their favorite operating system without resorting to extra setup steps. When installing Windows to a multi-disk array attached to the Revolution SPU, this eliminates the typical "Press F6 to load driver" requirement in Windows XP for example. And, if an operating system is already installed, a Netcell-based drive array can be added and it will automatically be recognized by the OS—and will be immediately available for use. Netcell's true plug-and-play simplicity means no complex driver installs, no device driver conflicts, and no operating system updates are required to use our products. Easy array set-up and configuration is accomplished using either the Revolution SPU BIOS screen or the operating system's graphical user interface.

Netcell Data Migration
Automatically move or migrate data from one hard drive to another
Data migration not only allows data to be moved automatically from drive to another, it makes it possible to spread existing data across an array using a total of five drives (including the original drive). This makes it easy for users to add storage space to an already working computer without having to move the data first or reinstall the entire operating system. Using a simple interface, users can easily migrate existing data from one hard drive to another. Also, operating systems can be moved onto larger drive arrays without requiring new drivers or a complete reinstall.

Enterprise-Class Protection
The Revolution SPU (storage processing unit) provides users with enterprise-class protection for a fraction of the price. Not only does the Revolution SPU add capacity and increased performance, it adds protection. Last year, 1,000,000 hard drives crashed. With Netcell Revolution storage processor-based accelerator cards, you will never need fear a hard drive crash; if one occurs, your computer continues running normally—at full performance—because the Revolution SPU automatically detects the failure and instantly protects your data. Even after the crashed drive is removed, your computer continues to function normally, and if the drive is replaced, the data rebuild occurs in the background without affecting system performance. This is important for Enterprises. Since the system is still working at 100% capacity, IT departments can service the drive during off-hours. In fact, remote e-mail notification instantly informs IT in the event of hard drive failure.

Instantly Backs Up Data As It Is Created
Netcell ZEROtouch technology automatically protects work by providing always-on, continuous data protection. Users never need to remember to hit "back-up", because if a drive fails, the data is automatically protected. Backup is performed with zero loading on the host CPU unlike conventional backup approaches, meaning work can continue uninterrupted. This also means a user never forgets to backup data so that in the infrequent event that a disk drive fails, the Revolution SPU instantly switches to the redundant backup data set. Servicing itself is as simple as disconnecting the bad drive and replacing it with a new one. This hot swappable capability means that there is no added service time for re-booting, re-installing or updating. And, the drive itself can be any make, model or size—matching is not required. Users can even add drives, for a maximum of five drives. Best of all, the computer continues running at FULL PERFORMANCE, after drive failure and during drive rebuild.

Increased Storage And Data Protection Are A Scant 15 Seconds Away
Netcell's QuickConfig technology means that drive arrays can be built fast—often in less than 15 seconds—and the completely driverless design means no messy installs, making it extremely compatible virtually all software applications. In contrast, it can take up to eight hours to build a drive array using a standard RAID 5-based controller card. Expandability is a big plus: Users can add up to a total of five drives—which can be of any make and varying size—for maximum flexibility.

Supercharge Your Storage
At the core of the Netcell Revolution storage processor is a 32-bit RISC processor that uses 64-bit data paths. This powerful storage engine acts like the computer’s third brain—providing automatic and continuous disk data protection, managing the system’s storage processing needs and freeing up the host CPU for other processing tasks. The Netcell Revolution storage processor accesses multiple hard drives simultaneously, allowing data to be written to and read from them faster than would be possible with a single drive.

Netcell RAID 3 Technology
Superior to RAID 5 for multimedia files
Netcell's patented RAID 3 architecture is not only based on professional workstation and video editing technology, it is designed and priced for consumers. Up until recently, true bit-wise striped RAID 3 was only used in high-end video RAID systems typically found in professional film editing studios, and these cost upward of $10,000. Netcell's RAID 3 technology provides superior performance over RAID 5 when capturing data to disk drives as it eliminates the usual performance degrading write process employed by RAID 5 engines or software solutions.

Netcell's on-the-fly integrated XOR Engine
The Netcell Revolution SPU uses a highly efficient XOR engine that eliminates time consuming three-step "read-modify-write" operations, resulting in higher overall throughput for both reading and writing operations. It works by transparently breaking data into small pieces known as "words", which are written to or read from all of the drives synchronously. By contrast, traditional cards based on RAID 5 technology use much larger data blocks and access data sequentially from one drive at a time. When writing to a disk, traditional cards must first read the entire stripe from all drives in the array, then make a complex parity calculation before they can perform the write operation. Furthermore, SyncRAID’s XceleratOR Engine enables users to continue working during a disk failure at full speed with no loss of productivity.

Offloads Storage Processing From The System CPU—Unleashes Performance
- SyncRAID is specifically designed to overcome the limitations of traditional RAID technology and provide a solution for today’s demanding storage environments, offering the fastest available ATA and Serial ATA storage performance for bandwidth-intensive desktop, workstation, and media server applications. SyncRAID delivers high-end performance with low-cost drives, while providing enterprise-class security for data and content. Regardless if a single disk or multiple disks are connected to a Revolution SPU, there are two fundamental levels of performance enhancements and protection levels that cards based upon the Netcell Revolution SPU provide. The first is the dedicated level 2 drive cache ranging from 32 Megabytes to 512 Megabytes. This large cache is used to store recently accessed data. Read performance is increased because data stored in cache can be accessed much faster than data accessed directly from the hard drive platter.
- The second is the multi-disk RAID 3 performance with full drive crash protection. This is further enhanced with SyncRAID optimized media streaming technology.

Revolution Management Suite
Your Storage Toolbox
The Revolution Management Suite delivers the tools you need intelligently clean, organize, protect and optimize your digital pictures, movies, songs and important data. It gathers the industry's top award-winning software into a powerful package that is included with Revolution storage processing cards. These products have been selected to specifically enhance the capabilities of the Revolution storage processor. Netcell has selected these market leaders because they reflect Netcell's core values and reinforce the message/vision of data protection and enhancement in a simple intuitive interface.