NAS 7825, Next Generation Media Networked Storage Solution
PLX NAS 7825 brings a new architectural
approach to consumer NAS system on a chip
(SoC)
For years the conventional approach to SoC design
has been the bigger hammer approach. To improve
the performance, increase the clock speed of the
processor. This approach has not been unique to the
consumer NAS market but more of a general
semiconductor industry approach.
The PLX 7825 changes the game by a holistic view of
the overall system architecture. It uses the PLX
Trident architectural approach:
with intensive processing requirement, the
product has implemented hardware engines to
relieve the processor and the internal bus from
intensive processing and system traffic. Hence
this improves the overall system performance
with better processor utilization (i.e., higher
throughput per CPU clock) reduces internal traffic
within the SoC, and better cost structure due to
less processor demand. PLX NAS 7825 utilizes
hardware offload engines in networking, security,
and storage (i.e., RAID & SATA) areas.
3. What integrates all the sub-systems together as a
cohesive system is restructured firmware. The key
design criterion is to fully utilize and bond all the
system hardware via highly optimized firmware.
Simply said, optimized firmware to utilize
hardware modules. This is the most challenging
part of the overall system architecture. The PLX
NAS 7825 has taken this approach to the next
level by providing the industry’s highest
optimized firmware for consumer storage.
Figure 1: Trident Architectural Approach
1. Processor still is a key part of the overall
architecture. However, the new applications,
particularly the media applications, have unique
and stringent requirements such as low jitter and
high QoS. The common single core processors
simply cannot meet these requirements effectively
regardless of how fast the processor clock is
running. On the other hand, the dual core
architecture has significant advantages in:
Simultaneously running multiple applications
Performance intensive applications
Multi-threading kernels such as Linux
Flexibility in processor resource allocation.
For example, each core could be dedicated to
specific application or load-sharing and
balancing
Independent I & D cache reduces cache
pollution improved power/performance ratio
particularly in media application processing
2. Application specific hardware offload engine. The
PLX NAS 7825 has taken this approach to the
next level. By analyzing the performance funnel,
and indentifying the key areas and applications
© PLX Technology, www.plxtech.com
Figure 2: NAS 7825 architecture overview
Enabling innovation and expansion into new
markets
The concept of networked storage is expanding into
many other consumer devices such as
routers/gateways, set-top boxes, and PVR/DVRs.
These new devices need to take additional roles over
traditional NAS. For example, they need to provide
routing, access point services, VoIP, NAT to name
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