HP A7143A RAID160 SA Controller Support Guide

RAID160 SA Controller Overview
Board Components and Features
Chapter 232
IMPORTANT The batteries on a new RAID160 SA controller may have a low charge
when the controller board is first installed. No action is required on your
part, since the internal circuitry automatically recharges the batteries
and enables the cache. The recharge process takes less than four hours.
The controller will function properly during this time, but without the
performance advantage of the array accelerator. When the batteries are
charged to an acceptable capacity, the array accelerator is automatically
enabled.
PCI System Interface
RAID160 SA controller interfaces with the system through a
high-performance 64-bit PCI bus that:
• Runs at 66 MHz
• Provides a high-speed path (up to 528 MB/s) between the system
board and the controller
• Includes two parity protection signals
The RAID160 SA controller is a PCI Bus Master device conforming to
Rev. 2.2 of the PCI Local Bus Specification. As a bus master device, it
takes control of the PCI bus during high-speed transfers, freeing the
system processor to handle application processing or other types of tasks.
For maximum performance, HP recommends that you use only 66-MHz
devices on any given 66-MHz PCI bus. Combining 66-MHz and 33-MHz
devices on a PCI bus will decrease the overall bandwidth to 33-MHz
speeds.
SCSI Support
The RAID160 SA controller supports disk drives that conform to Wide
Ultra160 and Wide Ultra2 standards. Although Wide Ultra2 devices
operate at a different maximum speed from Wide Ultra160 devices,
operating speeds are unaffected if they are connected to the same SCSI
bus because they both use low voltage differential (LVD) signaling.