Network-Attached Storage Media Server Reference Design Kit

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) Market Trends

SOHO/Consumer NAS is currently designed using a file-centric storage medium to store and back up data files as documents, photos, video, and digital content. Market trends suggest that NAS solutions will migrate to a multimedia home entertainment storage medium capable of streaming HD video and high quality audio, in addition to providing for storage and back up needs of digital media. With the increasing storage density of current hard drives, customers have the opportunity to increase their storage capacity at fairly low cost. Also, advanced backup/redundancy technologies result in reduced failures and better productivity. The growing penetration of VoD and off-line movie-download services provides a tangible need for simple, yet reliable and sophisticated, storage devices.

Features and Benefits
The NetLogic Microsystems NAS Media Server reference design is a production ready platform addressing the low-to-mid-range SMB NAS and Home NAS media server market segments. With outstanding networking performance, rich feature set, and variety of interfaces, the NetLogic Microsystems NAS Media Server Design Kit allows customers to quickly adopt a multithreaded solution for today's storage demands and beyond.

The solution includes:

• SATA disk interfaces, allowing up to two disks that support a variety of RAID configurations such as RAID0, 1 and 10
• USB interface to connect to an additional external RAID5 disk and other peripheral devices
• GbE networking interface
• On-board DDR2
• A mini-PCIe slot that offers a wide range of add-on features such as WiFi, eSATA, wireless modem, graphics coder, and Bluetooth
• XLS®-based Multi-Core, Multi-Threaded XLS108 Processor offering best-in-class performance
• Small and cost-effective mini-Tx form factor

XLS® Processor
The XLS Processor® features state-of-the-art Multi-Core, Multi-Threading technology that includes a Fast Messaging Network™ (FMN) for efficient on-chip communication. A security engine (Autonomous Security Engine®) and compression engine offload work from the CPU to perform critical application tasks. XLS Processors are pin-compatible, with single-core to quad-core designs that support four virtual CPU's (vCPU’s™) per core. An optimal cache subsystem incorporates separate L1 caches per-core, and a large shared L2 cache for increased application performance. In summary, the XLS Processor offers a cost-effective single-chip solution, with outstanding network performance and rich feature set, for the next generation of scalable multi-service applications

 

NAS Media Server Reference Design System Block Diagram

Software Development Kit

The NAS Media Server Reference Design Kit comes with fully featured SDK equipped with NetLogic Microsystems boot loader, Linux 2.6.xx RAID enabled, web-based configuration GUI (evaluation only), and complete development tool kit (compiler, debugger etc.). It also provides sample code and GUI. NetLogic Microsystems supports the industry-standard GNU compiler tool chain with an XLS-optimized GCC compiler and a MIPS cross-compile tool chain for x86 Linux. NetLogic Microsystems also provides an optional Linux-based XLS Debugger (compiler, linker and debugger).

NetLogic Microsystems Partner Alliance
NetLogic Microsystems has established a broad partner alliance to enable OEMs to quickly take a cost-effective NAS media server reference design to market. The alliance includes a long list of mature industry leading ODMs and third-party software vendors, including Wind River, Monta Vista, and Abatron.

Platform Hardware Specifications

CPU XLS108 Processor* supports up to eight virtual CPUs Peripherals One GbE port (TS enabled) One USB2.0 host port One RS232 DB9 UART Two SATA ports Mini PCIe connector 802.11n WiFi support Serial ToD (Time of Day) device I2C E2PROM Debug Support EJTAG port

Memory 256 MB of single-channel 533 MHz DDR2 RAM Each slot accepts buffered or unbuffered, single or dual rank, 240-pin DDR2 DIMMs with 64-bit data, 8-bit ECC Design supports up to 400 MHz operation 32 MB of NOR Flash; 1GB of NAND Flash (optional) Indicators Power-on LED Disk activity LED Ethernet Link speed and activity sensors LED for user-defined functions such as alerts or message pending On-board temperature sensors for case and CPU Board Dimensions Mini ITX form Factor 7 inches x 7 inches Accepts any MITX power supply

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Platform Software Support

Boot loader NetLogic Microsystems Corporation boot loader Operating System Linux 2.6.xx SMP Kernel CPIO RAMDisk image for initial boot Linux MD RAID auto-mount/assemble Protocols NFS, CIFS/SMB (Windows file sharing) FTP, SSH, TELNET NTP, HTTP, SMTP

RAID RAID0, RAID1, JBOD RAID5 (with external third disk) Applications System Web-based GUI Disk management suite User/group management Quota management Sharing permissions Data encryption Printer spooler Mail spooler

* The NAS board layout is also pin-compatible with other 100-series, 200-series, and 400-series XLS Processors.