Three U.S. Patents for Dot Hill

Dot Hill Systems Corp. announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has recently granted the company three patents pertaining to Dot Hill’s line of RAID storage systems employing the company’s innovative Rapid Evolution (R/Evolution) Architecture.

These unique technologies, developed by Dot Hill’s engineering team at the company’s Longmont, Colo. technology center, are part of Dot Hill’s growing patent portfolio which enables the company to continue to provide unique products to a growing list of OEM customers. To date, the company has been awarded 38 patents.

The newest patents granted to Dot Hill include:

• U.S. patent 7,340,555, “RAID System for Performing Efficient Mirrored Posted-Write Operations” — This patent pertains to Dot Hill’s SimulCache™ data caching architecture which leverages redundant RAID controllers, thus eliminating the performance degradation associated with conventional cache mirroring. The implementation of a high-speed dedicated PCI-Express bus streamlines write performance, resulting in superior overall system responsiveness to drive faster application throughput in database-related deployments.
• U.S. patent 7,380,115, “Transferring Data using Direct Memory Access” — This patent pertains to a method of improving controller performance by consolidating RAID functions into hardware and adding advanced memory controller technology.
• U.S. patent 7,380,055, “Apparatus and Method  in a Cached RAID Controller Utilizing a Solid State Backup Device for Improving Data Availability Time” — This patent pertains to Dot Hill EcoStor, an environmentally friendly ‘green,’ battery-free alternative that leverages a combination of super capacitors and compact flash technology for non-volatile cache memory. With up to a 10-year life span, EcoStor practically eliminates service calls for battery replacement, new battery inventory management, and the issues of battery disposal, as well as the periodic replacement downtime associated with batteries. Additionally, it offers an improved customer experience upon installation or power restore as it does not require lengthy battery charging time. The array operates in high-performance write-back cache mode within minutes of installation, versus hours with batteries.

“OEMs look to Dot Hill for innovative ‘out-of-the box’ solutions that solve their customers’ storage challenges and provide a competitive advantage to our OEM partners,” said Jim Kuentzel, senior vice president of Engineering for Dot Hill. “These latest additions to our ever-expanding patent portfolio are a testament to the expertise of our seasoned engineering team.”

Dot Hill R/Evolution Storage Architecture
Gives OEMs a Competitive Advantage
The highly modular, highly dynamic Dot Hill R/Evolution Architecture is designed to rapidly evolve and support OEM technology, enabling OEMs to quickly achieve sustainable competitive advantage in the volume storage market. The R/Evolution Architecture delivers the high levels of performance, storage density, time-to-market leadership and – most importantly – configuration flexibility required by volume storage customers. Using modular and bladed components, the R/Evolution Architecture provides OEMs with a ‘configure-to-product’ model (not just ‘configure-to-order’) that lets them customize volume storage market solutions quickly, easily and precisely. This unique model revolutionizes how OEMs bring storage products to market by ensuring opportunities for product differentiation, even between different companies that simultaneously OEM products from Dot Hill.