Taipei, Taiwan, April 21, 2010 -- Areca Technology Corporation (ARECA), a leading provider of internal RAID Controller, external RAID controller and PCI-X/PCIe RAID controllers with Intel RAID 6 inside, today announced that its XMC/PMC SAS RAID controllers have featured with two SFF-8470 connectors at the front bezel. Each connector combines four SAS/SATA ports into a single jack-screw style locked connection for operation in rugged environments.

ARC-1680P is a high performance reconfigurable PMC/XMC (PCI Mezzanine Card) that is ideal for ruggedized systems requiring high bandwidth storage. It is based on the Intel IOP348 controller, equipped with 8 ports of either SAS or SATA connectivity at 3.0 Gb/s per ports. Features include high performance dual core IOP348 I/O processor, 512MB DDR2-533 memory and high speed PCI-X or PCIe x8 interface. A heat-sink is provided adequate cooling for the Intel IOP348 I/O controller and conducts heat to front bracket. ARC-1680P can be used on Video/IR systems and Signal Intelligence, etc. Application areas can be found in markets such as medical, military, aerospace and automation.

Since the ARC-1680P is offered as a hybrid PMC/XMC, it can be used with the carrier boards that have PMC sites on-board, as well as newer carrier boards which offer XMC sites. Designed as a plug-and-play solution, the ARC-1680P mezzanine board automatically selects the data bus according to whether the signals are present on the latest high-speed functionality P15 connector in the XMC form factor. Otherwise, it switches to PCI-X on the PMC connectors. An integrated micro DIP switch allows the PMC connection to be used in lower performance 3.3 V PCI busses with reduced throughput capability. This integrated micro DIP switch also allows for manual override of the host bus selection.