The A33603-AIC product is a two-piece solution with the expander on a module (A33603-MMC) including program memory and power supplies. A separate carrier board is used to provide the connectivity and chassis management resources. Two standard versions of the carrier are available, meant for stand-alone expander builds, these have 9 miniSAS internal sockets for cabled interconnect. Astek can easily spin a carrier board that fits exactly your connectivity needs, with internal, external and even backplane type connectors. The boards are in use today in commercial, industrial and MIL-STD ruggedized environments with wide temperature and vibration limits.
The A33603-AIC product is designed to allow the chassis integrator a lighting fast path to constructing custom storage systems.The AIC provides 9 IPASS connectors which can be attached to any combination of HBA controllers (we strongly recommend those from LSI Corp) and target disks, AICs can even be cascaded to allow a single HBA wide-port to drive 100 or more target disks. Standard cables connect the 4 lanes per IPASS conector to either 4 independent SAS/SATA single channel sockets (7-pin female), Infiniband x4 or internal and external IPASS connectors. Bulkhead converters can be purchased which mate the internal AIC board to cabling outside the chassis.
Typical uses include creating simple JBOD (Just A Bunch of Disks) enclosures, or attaching a large array of front panel disk packs to a PCIe HBA card, such as adding 12-16 3.5" HDDs to a 4U 19" rackmount server chassis.
Astek is also a source-code licensee for the firmware which operates within the LSISASx36 chipset, allowing us to develop custom SCSI Enclosure Services (SES) images to tailor the operation of the AIC to your system. Options incude autonomous supervisory monitoring, physical and slot remapping (to provide human-readable identifications for your disk bays) and more. The AIC supports a number of directly controlled LED output drivers to provide inexpensive human-interface functions, and also suports SGPIO for extended fault/link/activity indications for all 36 lanes (up to two independant LED functions - Fault/Activity/Identify). SGPIO LED driver requires a separate PWB product from Astek, contact your sales representative for more information.
The Astek A33603-AIC product is sold as a single unit, expander (See Astek A33603-MMC) and I/O breakout module.
Ordering part numbers:
- A33603-AIC-11 : 9 Upright IPASS connectors
- A33603-AIC-12 : 9 Right-angle IPASS connectors
Specifications for the AIC design are currently only distributed to customers with an active NDA in place. See your sales representative for more information.
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Product Solutions 
With 36 lanes of SAS, system designers can connect hundreds of target disks to a SAS HBA. The A33603-AIC family offers two connector configurations to fit your chassis. 
