commercially available, and we have to
keep in mind that other promising dye
and coating formulations ultimately
could not adequately withstand
continuous exposure to sunlight. But
this could be a significant step forward.
COMPUTERS AND
NETWORKING
NEW UNIFIED STORAGE
APPLIANCE
■ Sun's
Storage 7410,
top dog in the
7000 family.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SUN MICROS YSTEMS.
Billed as the "world's first unified
storage appliances," Sun
Microsystems recently introduced
the Sun Storage 7000 family of "open
storage" devices, designed to "radically
simplify storage management and
problem solving at breakthrough
speed and scale." According to Sun,
"These new systems radically simplify
the way information is managed
and can deliver up to 75% cost/
performance savings to customers.
This is the biggest thing to happen to
storage in decades."
Three models are available: the
7110 (ultracompact model with 2 TB
of storage); the 7210 (mid-range
storage featuring up to 48 TB of
capacity); and the 7410 (support for
up to 0.5 PB of capacity that includes
support for read and write optimized
SSDs and Sun's Flash Hybrid Storage
Pool technology).
All of the 7000 systems include
comprehensive data services at no
extra cost, such as snap/clone,
restore, mirroring, RAID- 5, RAID- 6,
replication, active-active clustering,
compression, thin provisioning, CIFS,
NFS, iSCSI, HTTP/FTP, and WebDAV.
For details, visit www.sun.com. But
check your bank account first. The
devices start at $10,000 and top off
at $89,490 for the 7410 in a clustered
12 TB configuration.
beast. It's a rugged military-grade
rackmount computer system based
on an ultra high-performance Tyan
Thunder n6550EX S4989 Quad AMD
Opteron® processor motherboard
and an EVGA e-GeForce 9800 GX2
graphics processing unit, which offers
two DVI-I outputs with up to 2560 x
1600@ 60 Hz graphics.
Intended for applications where a
short depth, light weight, and sturdy
rackmount system are required, the
system is optimized for installation in
transit cases or mobile installations
such as aircraft and other vehicles. It
meets all appropriate Mil standards for
shock, vibration, and environmental
specifications, so you can beat it
around all you want.
The machine can be configured
with up to 128 GB of 667 MHz
DDR2 RAM and two 1 TB enterprise-level drives. The single or dual
redundant 1,200W power supplies
are kept cool by four 120 CFM fans.
All this is wrapped in a 5052 high-strength aluminum case. As you might
expect, no list price was offered. But
if you're interested, you can get a
quote via the company's website.
CIRCUITS
AND DEVICES
ANY RATE, ANY OUTPUT
CLOCK GENERATOR
700 MHz on each of the device's
four differential outputs, thus
simplifying timing architectures by
replacing four discrete phase-locked
loop (PLL) devices with a single IC.
Silabs claims best-in-class
performance and integration while
shortening design cycles for
applications such as next-generation
communications equipment, wireless
base stations, broadcast video,
test and measurement, and data
acquisition. At 1 ps RMS random jitter
typical, the Si5338 can simultaneously
generate low jitter clocks for a variety
of ICs, including processors, FPGAs,
ASICs, memory, and physical layer
transceivers. The device generates
four differential or eight single-ended
outputs per device, eliminating the
need for external clock distribution
buffers. In addition to frequency,
each output clock is independently
configurable in terms of supply
voltage (1.5, 1.8, 2.5, 3. 3 volts) and
signal format (LVPECL, LVDS, CMOS,
HCSL, SSTL, HSTL), eliminating the
need for external level translators,
and reducing BOM cost and
complexity.
If you don't need the
programmability provided by the
Si5338, there is the option of a
broad line of Si5334 pin controlled
clock generators for Ethernet,
Fibre Channel, PCI Express,
T1/E1, broadcast video (HDTV),
RUGGED MILITARY
COMPUTER INTRODUCED
There may not be much going on
in the consumer PC market right
now, but the new MQS4U-20A
from Chassis Plans ( www.ch
assis-plans.com) is a pretty interesting
Silicon Laboratories, Inc. (www.
silabs.com), the Austin-based
producer of high-performance,
analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs,
has introduced a family of clock
generators and buffers that provide
a high level of frequency flexibility.
Based on the company's MultiSynth
technology, the Si5338 is capable of
synthesizing any frequency from 0.16
to 350 MHz and select frequencies to
■ Chassis Plans' MQS4U-20A, intended
for rugged military applications.
January 2009 13