VIA DriveStation™ Controller Suite

The VIA DriveStation™ Controller Suite in the VIA VT8251 provides the most comprehensive set of high-performance integrated storage interface technologies available on the market today. It not only enables high-speed 300MB/s dual channel connections to new generation Serial ATA Hard Drives while retaining support for today’s Parallel ATA-133 devices, but also combines exceptionally fast disk data transfer rates and optimal data integrity with easy installation and manageability through the VIA V-RAID controller interface.

VIA DriveStation™ Serial ATA Controller

The VT8251 South Bridge offers full support for the latest SATA specification enhancements as defined by SATA-IO, including support for 3 Gb/s transfer rates, Native Command Queuing (NCQ), Port Multipliers and Hot Plug Connections.

Four SATA 3Gb/s Ports
The VT8251 South Bridge features four SATA ports for direct connection to up to four SATA master devices featuring the latest 3.0Gb/s transfer rates while remaining backwards compatible with devices featuring 1.5Gb/s data transfer rate. It is also possible to configure devices in two separate master/slave connections (a total of four drives), with data transfer rates of 3 Gb/s (master), and a 1.5Gb/s (slave).

Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
Native Command Queuing (NCQ) increases storage performance by allowing supporting drives to deal with more than one command at a time, while dynamically reordering the commands for maximum efficiency.

NCQ minimizes the number of I/O interrupts a server makes on the drive when carrying out multiple commands, allowing it to complete 32 commands without interruption. Without NCQ running, the host interrupts the process before each command. NCQ also reduces general wear and tear on the drives, potentially extending drive life expectancy.

Intelligent reordering of commands within the drive’s internal command queue helps improve performance by reducing mechanical positioning (both seek and rotational) latencies on the drive. The Server and Workstation market has utilized Command Queuing technology in SCSI drives for more than a decade, but SATA NCQ represents the first time such technology is available for the desktop PC market.

Additional SATA features
In combination with supporting drives, the VT8251 South Bridge enables support hot plug capabilities to boost drive reliability. Hot plug operation allows a user to swap out a failed drive or add a new drive without taking down all the drives in an array.

VIA DriveStation™ Serial ATA Controller Performance

DriveStation™ Parallel ATA-133 Controller
The VIA DriveStation™ Controller Suite also includes an enhanced IDE controller with a dual channel DMA engine and interlaced dual channel commands, allowing for full backwards compatibility with up to four Parallel ATA 133/100/66 devices delivering data transfer rates of up to 133 MB/s.

VIA DriveStation™ V-RAID Controller
The advanced VIA DriveStation™ V-RAID Controller implemented in the VIA VT8251 South Bridge enables users to benefit from all the enhanced performance and rock solid data security benefits of a high-end RAID system, but without the complicated setup procedures that are normally found in such a PC and at a much more affordable price.

With digital media applications such as digital video creation and editing, and digital audio storage and playback becoming increasingly popular, the demands on hard disk drive throughput are growing at a dramatic rate. But although memory, processor, and Front Side Bus technologies have improved in recent years, significantly enhancing the performance of desktop systems, storage performance has not scaled at the same rate. V-RAID overcomes this bottleneck by delivering a significant boost in desktop storage performance.

VIA V-RAID supports a complete range of RAID Level 0, RAID Level 1, RAID Level 0+11, RAID Level 5, and JBOD configurations (shown in the table below), giving the user maximum flexibility in tuning their disk array to achieve the optimum balance of performance and data integrity depending on their requirements.

Based on VIA’s ground breaking DriveThru™ technology, V-RAID also enables ‘on-the-fly’ upgrades to RAID configurations, and an exceptionally user friendly software interface for V-RAID installation and management. Its key benefits are described in more detail below.

V-RAID Software Interface
With its unique user-friendly V-RAID Tool software interface, VIA V-RAID makes it easier and faster than ever before to install and manage RAID configurations. Users who are not confident in using the RAID BIOS to configure RAID arrays can do so from within their Microsoft® Windows® or Linux operating system in a few easy steps. VIA’s DriveThru™ technology also enables users to easily migrate from a standard Parallel ATA or Serial ATA drive configuration to a higher performance RAID configuration ‘on-the-fly’ – without having to endure lengthy installation procedures involving complicated BIOS set-ups and OS re-installations.