9700 Series MegaRAID™ Adapters
24Gb/s SAS and Gen 5.0 PCIe MegaRAID Adapters
High Port-Count PCIe 5.0 x16, 16- and 32-Port Adapters
Broadcom® Storage
Broadcom enables high performance storage connectivity and flexible system designs to support any combination of NVMe and SAS devices. Broadcom offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of storage solutions, now supporting PCIe Gen 5.0 24Gb/s SAS and NVMe. Backed by decades of experience and trusted by the world’s leading server and storage suppliers, Broadcom provides the building blocks for storage solutions that help customers understand, prioritize, store, and protect critical data.
Overview
The 9700 series MegaRAID™ adapters are powered by Broadcom® ninth-generation SAS ROC, delivering a 2x increase in random reads and a 5x increase in random write RAID performance over previous generations. The SAS5100 series RAID-
on-Chip (ROC) features a fully integrated RAID cache, allowing significantly more read/write bandwidth into and out of the memory, increasing RAID performance and delivering extremely low and deterministic write latency over the entire performance range of the adapter. When paired with NVMe or SAS SSDs, the exceptional performance of the 9700 series MegaRAID adapters ensures seamless multitasking, rapid data recovery, and unparalleled responsiveness in demanding environments such as high-performance computing, enterprise-grade applications, and data- intensive tasks.
Innovation
The integrated RAID cache of the SAS5132W and SAS5116W ROCs means the adapter no longer requires onboard DDR for data caching. Previous generations of adapters required up to 18 separate DDR devices, meaning extreme high-performing, low-profile adapters were not possible. The integrated RAID cache enables more performance than previous generations and also allows for a low-profile adapter.
Along with the integrated RAID cache, another major innovation on the 9700 series MegaRAID adapter is the onboard energy backup solution. Innovations in the SAS5132W and SAS5116W caching and offload architecture now allows for an embedded SuperCap on the adapter. The embedded SuperCap means the adapter no longer requires a tethered SuperCap, like previous generations. This frees up space in the server and enables flexibility in choosing the location for the MegaRAID adapter.
The SuperCap is positioned on a small pluggable daughter card, allowing it to still be serviceable if replacement is needed.
The 9700 series MegaRAID adapters also include the PCIe Embedded Analyzer (PEA). All PCIe links on the host and device side of the SAS5132W and SAS5116W ROCs include embedded hardware that can be programmed to capture PCIe information for debugging. There is a rich set of trigger, trace, and filter capabilities that are set up through function calls using a software tools library running either in- band from the host or from a management entity such as the baseboard management controller (BMC). Customers will find this feature invaluable not only during the design phase, but also when deployed into the field.
Hardware Secure Boot and Attestation
The adapter’s ROC controller supports hardware secure boot and device authentication to help protect against malicious activity. Hardware secure boot permits only authenticated firmware to execute on the controller. Broadcom provides the signed firmware images, making the use of hardware secure boot transparent to customers while providing confidence in the security of the solution. Device authentication provides a mechanism for the adapter to prove its unique device identity to another entity in the platform as part of a platform attestation implementation. Unique device identity is proven through a device ID certificate and a challenge protocol. Use of device authentication is optional, but is available to those needing extra security for their implementation