Any experience with this PCIe 3.0 RAID card: Atto H6FO-GTO

[dba]

The Atto H6FO0-GT0 is the first PCIe 3.0 RAID card that I have seen, and the marketing claims are impressive - 16 ports and a claimed 19GB/Second throughput. Has anyone worked with one of these?

http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?cat=3&scat=27&sku=ESAS-H6F0-GT0

 

[mobilenvidia]

The ATTO H6F0 GT is the industry’s first SAS/SATA adapter utilizing the PCIe 3.0 specification and is capable of speeds up to 8GB/s in a single PCIe slot, effectively doubling the performance over existing HBAs. The impressive speed of the H6F0 GT PCIe adapter, enabled by PLX’s Gen3 switch, delivers support for a dense and efficient connection to SSD and HDD storage applications.

The PLX ExpressLane™ PEX8724 (24 lanes, six ports) PCIe Gen3 switch, used in the new H6F0 GT HBA, enables designers to connect host systems to other network and storage devices. PCIe Gen3 is a high-performance standard capable of saturating a x8 link at 8 Gbps in both directions (Tx/Rx), per lane, totaling 64GB/s of throughput which challenges all other connectivity standards. The PLX Gen3 portfolio today totals 11 devices ranging from 12 to 48 lanes and three to 18 ports, and all are available today.

“ATTO is pleased to partner with PLX on this industry-first technology,” said Wayne Arvidson, vice president of marketing at ATTO Technology, Inc. “The pairing of our ExpressSAS H6F0 GT cards with PLX’s Gen3 switch, enables us to offer customers a high-performance connectivity solution not available anywhere else on the market.”

Basically its a dual 8x 6Gbps port SAS controller going via a PCIe 8x Gen3 slot via a PLX switch.
So each controller has 8x PCIe 8x slots attached to the PLX switch which then connects to the system also PCIe 8x

The LSI9202 also has 2x Controller (not PCIe Gen3 though) on the same card but it has a PCIe 16x connection.
This theoretically can also put out the same through put as it's twice the PCIe lanes but 1/2 the bandwidth per lane.

Adding a switch does add latency and the speeds they quote can't be achieved (only on paper)
But still it's a good interim solution as the LSI9202 is hard to get.