Home media NAS from Broadcom uses WL-700g CPU

[Styno]

Just found an article on LinuxDevices (http://www.linuxdevices.com) about a new NAS design from Broadcom. It uses the same CPU as the Asus WL-700g (BCM4780 SoC) but allows for three harddisks to be installed.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/files/misc/mediabolic_broadcom_nas.jpg

Read the full article here: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7290790007.html

While this is still a reference design, we will probably see some manufacturers picking this up which will result in some good contenders for the WL-700g. Too bad Broadcom didn't implement a hardware XOR engine. This will make RAID-5 unreasonably slow most likely. Besides that, the Broadcom CPU (http://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pb/4780P-PB01-R.pdf) supports RAID levels 0, 1 and 10.

[eborgard]

Several major product manufacturers (Asus, Maxtor,Wistron, USI, Lanner, Foxconn, Deltaand Airvast...) have announced they will use the Broadcom NASOC BCM4780 chip, I can't find any commercial product using it yet on the market apart from Maxtor who does not use all functionalities (and also uses a separate IC to provide USB2 ports). Recent announcements (e.g. Broadcam/Mediabolic announce a "reference design" in October http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/1432/broadcom_and_mediabolic) suggest that the IC is not really selling in true mass production quantities. However, Broadcom claimed in June that "The BCM4780 controller chip, including all its associated software, is currently shipping in volume production. The BCM94780 reference design is available now" (http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=577584). Has anyone information from Broadcom about the real availability status of the BCM4780 (volume)?