A Network Storage LSI Suitable for Home Network

Storage over Ethernet (SoE) is a network storage architecture that allows direct attachment of existing ATA/ATAPI devices to Ethernet without a separate server. Unlike SAN, no server computer intervenes between the storage and the client hosts. We propose a SoE disk controller (SoEDC) amenable to low-cost, single-chip implementation that processes a simplified L3/L4 protocol and converts commands between Ethernet and ATA/ATAPI, while the rest of the complex tasks are performed by the remote hosts. Thanks to simple architecture and protocol, the SoEDC implemented on a single $4mm{\times}4mm$ chip in 0.18um CMOS technology achieves maximum throughput of 55MB/s on Gigabit Ethernet, which is comparable to that of a high-performance disk storage locally attached to a host computer.