Medea Corp. was an early pioneer in expanding the market for redundant array of independent disk (RAID) controllers. Identifying cost as a key barrier to RAID controller market penetration, the company set the goal of making RAID systems affordable to hobbyists and semiprofessionals involved in digital video and graphic editing. Digital video and graphic editing benefit from RAID systems' high data rates to produce high-quality video and graphic images. RAID controllers produce high data rates by combining data from multiple disk drives, appearing like a single, fast disk to a computer.
Medea needed to reduce the number of components for its VideoRAID controller to cut development costs. The company's engineers looked at application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and programmable logic solutions. Using ASICs, the company needed 11 components to produce all the functionality for the RAID controller. By designing the system with an Altera FLEX device, Medea reduced the component count to one.
"We considered a traditional design using standard protocol chips and a microprocessor, but the resulting costs were too high," said Michael Anderson, Medea vice president of engineering. "We decided to use a programmable logic device to reduce component count and overall cost."
After deciding on programmable logic, Medea engineers initially went to work creating drive protocols implemented as state machines on an Altera EPF6016 device. Using Altera's MAX+PLUS® II software, Medea engineers developed Verilog code for the design in about two weeks.
Midway through the design cycle, Medea decided to integrate bus and memory functions into the controller. The resulting design increased pin count, which could have forced the design onto a more expensive chip. However, an Altera field applications engineer recommended migrating the design to the EPF10K200E device with embedded memory. The EPF10K200E device enabled Medea designers to not only integrate the bus and memory functions, but also eliminate the need for external memory. The pin count was reduced, making the design affordable again.
As a result of using flexible Altera PLDs and powerful, easy-to-use design tools, Medea took its VideoRAID controller from concept to production in just over five months. Medea estimates that its manufacturing costs using FLEX 10K devices are 75 percent less than its closest competitor. "The FLEX 10K device was a major factor in this extremely short development cycle and the high level of integration accounts for the cost difference," said Anderson.
