RapidIO: The Next Generation Communication Fabric For Embedded Application

13.1. RAPIDIO IN STORAGE SYSTEMS

The challenge of successfully managing more data more easily is central to the professional existence of today's IT manager. A quick Google search of 'data storage management' yields literally thousands of references to storage hardware and software products, consulting services, books, and courses, all offering solutions to help meet this challenge.

Both data storage capacity and data storage creation are growing at tremendous rates. According to a Berkeley Information Study 2003[1], 'Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes (2⁶⁰) of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of this new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks.' Another example of the growth of data comes in the form of a quote from Dwight Beeson, a member of the Library Of Congress' Systems Engineering Group [2], 'Since 1993, we have had a compound data storage growth rate of about 120 percent per year.'

13.1.1. Features of Storage

A good example of a typical storage system architecture is the EMC MOSAIC:2000 architecture [3]. This architecture is comprised of a group of front-end processors referred to as channel directors, a large data cache and a set of back-end processors, referred to as disk directors. The front-end processors manage the communications between the host computers and the storage system. The back-end processors manage the communications between the storage system and the physical disk drives. The cache ...