Agere Enters Market for Home Multimedia Networks

Agere Systems introduced a portfolio of chips designed for multimedia and storage networking applications in homes and businesses. The new chips are designed to enable digital media server and network attached storage solutions capable of delivering content at 1 Gbps, enough for up to eight HDTV streams.


Agere's new portfolio of chips is called NASn01 (network attached storage), in which n stands for the number of Serial Advance Technology Attachment Level 1 (SATA 1) hard disk drives (HDDs) the chips can support. The portfolio includes four members: NAS8xx (supports up to 8 SATA 1 drives), NAS4xx (supports up to 4 SATA 1drives), NAS2xx (supports up to 2 SATA 1 drives), and the NAS1xx (supports a single SATA 1 drive).


Media streaming technology from Digital 5 Inc. is embedded in these chips.


In addition to its 1 Gbps speed benefit, key features include the ability to manage multiple streams (up to 64 concurrent sessions), content protection through RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), multiple hard disk drive (HDD) configurations (1, 2, 4, 8) for expandable storage capacity, and optional data security.


The Agere chips provide the ability to dynamically allocate bandwidth, protect the network, and store media and data content. The chips integrate two network interfaces: Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 for connectivity to a wireless local area network. The chips also house a multi-port (1, 2, 4, 8) SATA-1 storage controller to interface with up to eight HDDs.


Agere said these capabilities will make it possible for multiple people in the same house to simultaneously share, view and send digital entertainment content to and from a wide range of consumer equipment such as digital media servers, network-attached storage, PC storage/expansion and backup gear, routers, multi-user personal video recorders, network area servers, and audio servers. Similarly, in business environments the amount of bandwidth and storage required is growing exponentially, and this Agere chips meet the needs of such requirements. http://www.agere.com