High Speed Storage

Nethra® Storage Overview
Nethra Imaging has been developing scalable image processing solutions for video and multimedia applications from inception. As sensor resolutions and frame rates have escalated, so has the data output from sensors. Building storage solutions for these applications requires specialized knowledge of imaging, video, storage and networking - brought together at Nethra for our customers benefit. Nethra has released a line of high performance storage appliances - the Azores 100 platform - focused on the image and video process- ing markets in particular, with a focus on HD and UHD resolutions. These storage appliances have key features that differentiate them, and enable them to be deployed in both direct attached and networked environments quickly and economically.

Technology Background
The Azores 100 platform is composed of 3 fundamental blocks; the transport interface, the storage interface and the actual media. In particular, the implementation of the transport block uses advanced fabric and tunneling technologies - ExpEther™ - developed in cooperation with NEC Research Laboratories, Japan. The Host processor requires a Nethra FastPipe adapter card, plugged into the Host PCI Express fabric. Twin 10 Gbps fibers are used to either connect directly to the remotely located Azores 100 box, or to do so via a Layer 2 Ethernet switch. No drivers are needed for this adapter card - all communication is run at fiber-speed, in hardware. However, the host processor does need to run the driver of the storage controller embedded in the Azores 100 box. This architecture results in a number of end-user benefits.