Micro Memory Debuts Anvil, the Industry's First Subsystem to Provide an ``All-Digital'' Front-End Solution to Data Recording.

CHATSWORTH, Calif. -- Micro Memory(R) (www.micromemory.com) today introduced Anvil(TM), an "All-Digital" Front-End solution to Real Time Data Recording. Based on a completely embedded hardware architecture and solid state SDRAM memory, Anvil is the industry's first storage subsystem capable of properly addressing the technical challenges of recording real time sensor signals.

"Anvil's unique approach focuses on the most critical stage of sensor data recording: the safe, effective capture of signal data. With its ample amounts of SDRAM, streams can be interleaved to deep memory buffers to ensure sensor data isn't lost to irregular transfer rates inherent to secondary storage media based on hard disk drives," said Mike Jadon, Director of Product Marketing for Micro Memory.

Anvil is ideally suited for acquisition of real time sensor data for recording or signal analysis in intelligence and surveillance applications such as radar, signal intelligence, electro-optical/infrared, and software defined radio, or energy and fuel exploration, seismic analysis, and telemetry. In addition, it can be widely used in semiconductor manufacturing and test equipment, medical diagnostic and test equipment, real time simulators, various types of digital instrumentation, and video and streaming media editing facilities.

Anvil includes up to 64GB of high throughput, dual access SDRAM memory which has been optimally implemented to capture sensor data, rate buffer and seamlessly transfer it to secondary, external hard disk drive media. The platform's four full-length, full-height PCI slots accommodate a variety of sensor input I/O including A/D, serial FPDP, and custom LVDS or fiber links, as well as storage output I/O for fibre channel, SCSI, or SATA.

This allows users to record data to traditional hard disk drive arrays in the form of high capacity, cost effective "Just a Bunch of Disks" (JBODs) or RAIDs without sacrificing performance or consistent capture of sensor data.

Once recorded, data can be accessed by management workstation consoles for playback analysis, or server farms for off-line processing. Alternatively, depending on the application's bandwidth and storage requirements, workstations and servers can access data directly from Anvil without relying on any intermediary hard disk drive storage resources.

Features and Benefits

--Embedded, "All-Digital" architecture for high throughput, consistent, and deterministic performance.

--Enables the use of Hierarchal Storage where Anvil can support high sustained front-end throughput and A) large density, low cost SATA hard disk drives can be reliably utilized for secondary storage where more costly SCSI or fibre channel drives would otherwise be required, and B) far fewer hard disk drives can be utilized to achieve the necessary bandwidth and storage requirements resulting in reduced cost and complexity.

--First effective platform for bringing general purpose, widely utilized Linux file systems to real time data recording.

--Flexibility of four full height, full length PCI slots leveraging the computing industry's most widely utilized bus and form factor for various I/O such as A/D, Serial FPDP, fibre channel, SATA, etc.

--Native PowerPC and Gigabit Ethernet with optional support for x86 processor platforms (via PrPMC site).

Snapshot Recording Capabilities

Anvil is also the first storage subsystem to provide effective "snapshot" data recording capabilities. A significant technical challenge in snapshot data recording applications is the tendency for valuable sensor data to burst at very high rates that exceed the sustained write transfer capabilities of traditional storage media such as hard disk drives, flash memory, or tape. To effectively capture signal data utilizing one of these traditional storage mediums, sensors must often be down-throttled to reduced performance modes or data must be filtered at a higher degree of resolution than otherwise desired due to the inherent bandwidth limitations of the storage media.

Unlike other data recorders that are principally based on hard disk drive (HDD), flash, or tape technology, Micro Memory's Anvil utilizes SDRAM memory not just to maximize performance, but to ensure consistent, predictable performance. Providing thirty-two sockets for industry standard SODIMM modules, Anvil can provide up to 64GB of solid state, SDRAM memory. Each of the two memory arrays within Anvil can sustain data transfer rates of over 500 Megabytes/sec. These independent memory nodes also support multiple concurrent DMA operations, so data can be written into a single memory node while simultaneously being read out of the same memory node.

Pricing

Micro Memory's Anvil(TM) is available immediately and initial list pricing in quantity one is $30,000 per unit with volume discounts available.

About Micro Memory

Micro Memory is a leading provider of board-level products for streaming signal and image processing, real-time data acquisition, and enterprise network storage. Headquartered in Chatsworth, Calif., the company's innovative products solve challenging problems for industry-leading OEMs and system solution providers. Additional information is available at www.micromemory.com or contact [e-mail] or (US) 818-998-0070.