The Express DR series from Hifn is targeted to nearline storage OEMs and application developers. The boards provide hardware-based compression and now hashing features to such applications, allowing the applications/appliances to offload these functions at the hardware level for increased overall performance.

Current entries in the Express DR series line are the Express DR 600 and Express DR 1000 cards with compression only acceleration; and the new Express DR 250 and Express DR 255 cards which also boast on-board hashing and encryption abilities.

- Both of the DR 600/1000 boards are PCI Express form factor offerings; the DR 600 a half-height, half-length card and the DR 1000 a full-height, half-length card. Both feature 4-lane PCIe and ship with a Linux driver, high-level API, demo app software, and functional and POST test software. Software wise, the vendor notes an expandable software architecture that supports the load balancing of multiple boards in a system; and software compression libraries that can be utilized as a failover option. Both boards ship with a fan.

At the core of the boards is the vendor's Hifn 9630 data compression processors; two in the DR 600 and four in the DR 1000. Each processor features its own internal buffer and supports standard LZS compression, as well as an optional "Enhanced LZS" (eLZS) that features an anti-expansion algorithm. Compression operations are verified by the decompression engine.

Beneath the hood, the DR 600 boasts an up to 600 MB/sec full duplex data transfer rate; while the DR 1000 can transfer data at up to 1 GB/sec--speeds achieved via the boards' scatter/gather bus-master DMA technology. The processors are automatically load balanced, with a job queue scheduling operations for the next available processor (load balancing also supports out-of-order completions). A job completion IRQ is also supported.

- New to the vendor's product arsenal are the Express DR 250 and Express DR 255 boards, which, in addition to supporting hardware-based LZS compression, also include hardware accelerated hash and optional encryption capabilities. They are therefore targeted to de-duplication applications that make heavy use of these functions to identify similar data blocks. Both SHA-1 and MD-5 hashing are supported, with performance listed as up to 250 MB/sec for compression or hashing throughput (193 MB/sec for encryption; and 281 MB/sec for all three features combined). The 255 is a PCI Express x4 card (half height/half length), while the 250 is a PCI-X card (full height/half length). Both include a fan.

Pricing for the new 250/255 cards is listed at $1,195.

Contact Hifn for further information.