Wednesday, January 11th 2012

Marvell Introduces New 88SE92 Series 2-port and 4-port SATA 6 Gbps Controllers

Marvell introduced its latest line of SATA 6 Gbps controllers, under the 88SE92 Series. The series includes the 2-port 88SE9220, 4-port 88SE9230, and 4-port 88SE9235. All three take advantage of the new PCI-Express 2.0 x2 interface. PCI-Express x2 (2 lanes) has till now only been hypothetically possible, since PCI-SIG has no slot specification for it. With increasing need for system bandwidth while keeping pin-counts and package sizes low by onboard controllers (such as SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0), PCIe 2.0 x2 has emerged as a viable solution based on the proven PCIe 2.0 specification, as PCIe 3.0 is yet to attain maturity in the industry. PCIe 2.0 x2 gives the controller system bandwidth of 1000 MB/s per direction, 2000 MB/s total. This ensures that a connected SATA 6 Gb/s device doesn't face a bottleneck at a given time, something which was impossible on older PCIe 2.0 x1 chips.

This system bandwidth bottleneck alleviation also allowed Marvell to add support for up to 4 SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the 88SE9230 and 88SE9235. All three controllers further support port multipliers. Among the three, the 88SE9230 is the top-of-the-line chip, supporting Marvell RAID software, HyperDuo (Marvell's in-house SSD caching technology), RAID 0, 1, 10 modes, AHCI, and 128/256-bit AES native encryption. The 88SE9235 is a cost-effective variant of the 88SE9230, it lacks RAID, and only features AHCI/IDE modes. It also lacks native encryption. The 88SE9220, the 2-port controller, otherwise supports all the features of the 88SE9230, except of course support for RAID 10 (since it's not possible with just 2 member disks).
Marvell managed to keep the pin-count of the 4-port chips as low as 76, with a package size of 9 mm². The 2-port chip is similar to how big Marvell's existing 2-port chips are, at 7 mm². It's quite possible that these chips will make it to upcoming LGA1155 motherboards based on Intel's "Panther Point" 7-series chipset. Specifications from the product brief are tabled below.
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4 Comments on Marvell Introduces New 88SE92 Series 2-port and 4-port SATA 6 Gbps Controllers

#1
badtaylorx
i dont get this??? why does my amd 990fx board have 6 native sata iii (all raid) ports.....but my intel p67 + a marvel controller only have 4 (only 2 raid tho)

this seems to be the one area amd actually has the upper hand.....maybe they should sell their sb's to intell???
Posted on Reply
#2
Disparia
^ I have not used their latest chipset yet, but unless they got a lot better I'll certainly take an Intel ICH/PCH over SBxxx.
The 88SE9220, the 2-port controller, otherwise supports all the features of the 88SE9230, except of course support for RAID 10 (since it's not possible with just 2 member disks).
It's mentioned three times that they support port multipliers. Shows how little attention this features receives outside of spec sheets and press releases :(
Posted on Reply
#4
Disparia
Exactly my point :D

Marvell and others boost about their PM support, yet there are very few 3Gb options in the wild and no 6Gb.

I don't always need non-blocking bandwidth access to my harddrives. 6Gb for 5 drives would be sufficient in many cases.
Posted on Reply
Apr 19th, 2024 02:42 EDT change timezone

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