Intel have recently unveiled the latest addition to their I/O Processor family, the 800Mhz IOP333. Billed as a storage processor, the chip includes RAID-6 acceleration, allowing it to manage reliable data storage on large disc arrays.The XScale IOP333 is software compatible with the 600Mhz IOP321 CPU present in Castle's current Iyonix computers, and like the IOP332, the IOP333 doesn't have the bus performance issues that the IOP321 part is believed to suffer from. The new IOP333 includes a faster internal bus (333Mhz, shifting 2.7GB/s), dual ported DDR RAM support and more interrupt pins than the IOP332. Video memory is commonly dual ported RAM, as it enables data to be read and written effectively at the same time, and it's understood that MicroDigital are using dual ported memory in the Omega computer.
As a storage support processor, the IOP333 is part of Intel's roll out of their 64 bit Xeon enterprise range of hardware.
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Intel's I/O Processor family