CARLSBAD, Calif., June 24, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL), a world-class provider of entry-level and midrange storage solutions for OEMs and system integrators (SIs), today demonstrated its continued focus on technology innovation, with the announcement of six new patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Developed by Dot Hill's Longmont, Colo. engineering team, these latest innovations are part of the company's growing patent portfolio. Dot Hill has been awarded 48 patents to date. Dot Hill's dedication to technology helps give its growing list of OEMs a competitive edge in delivering innovative high performance storage solutions.

The newest patents granted to Dot Hill include:

    --  U.S. patent 7,536,495 "Certified memory-to-memory data transfer
        between active-active RAID controllers" -- This patent provides for
        improved communication efficiency and reliability between redundant RAID
        controllers.  By using a robust, efficient protocol for transferring
        data and controlling information, this innovation eliminates delays in
        write-cache synchronization and preserves CPU processing bandwidth for
        other tasks.
    --  U.S. Patent 7,536,506 "RAID controller using capacitor energy
        source to flush volatile cache data to non-volatile memory during main
        power outage" -- This invention provides a super capacitor energy
        source for RAID controllers. The super capacitor stores sufficient
        energy to guarantee that volatile write-data is safely transferred to
        non-volatile memory in the event that the main power is lost. Once the
        data is stored in the non-volatile memory, the RAID controller may
        remain unpowered indefinitely without losing any data. Super capacitor
        technology has significant advantages over older battery technologies,
        such as improved energy density, faster charge time, and significantly
        longer shelf life.
    --  U.S. Patent 7,536,508 "System and method for sharing SATA drives in
        an active-active RAID controller system" -- This innovation
        provides a method for efficiently sharing Serial ATA (SATA) drives in an
        active-active RAID system including one or more Serial Attached SCSI
        (SAS) expanders and a communications link between the first and second
        RAID controllers. An ownership protocol between redundant RAID
        controllers communicates ownership status and changes for each SATA
        drive in the RAID system. In the event of a failure by a redundant RAID
        controller, ownership is seamlessly transferred to another RAID
        controller.
    --  U.S. Patent 7,536,584 "Fault-isolating SAS Expander" -- This
        invention provides an intelligent Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) expander
        that automatically detects faulty communications on one of its links and
        isolates the fault by disabling a physical interface within the SAS
        expander. Upon reporting the disablement, the intelligent SAS expander
        recovers by taking corrective action and re-enabling the physical
        interface.
    --  U.S. Patent 7,543,096 "Safe message transfers on PCI-Express link
        from RAID controller to receiver-programmable window of partner RAID
        controller CPU memory" - This patent provides for reliable
        intercommunication between redundant RAID controllers in a
        high-availability storage system to ensure the correct user-data is
        written to the disk drives. A RAID controller defines a window in the
        memory of a redundant RAID controller for writing information, and if
        any write-addresses are outside the specified window, the receiving
        controller will not write the data. This can prevent inadvertent data
        corruption in RAID controller memory by not allowing received data to
        overwrite unrelated data that needs to be preserved.
    --  U.S. Patent 7,539,799 "Method and apparatus for identifying
        enclosures and devices" --This invention provides automatic
        assignment of unique IDs to enclosures that can be used to identify and
        determine the exact location of the enclosure in the data storage
        system.

"Our Longmont, Colo., team continues to expand its patent portfolio with technology innovations that we believe translate to a competitive advantage for our OEMs and other customers," said Jim Kuenzel, senior vice president of Engineering for Dot Hill. "We continue to seek smart solutions to keep pace with the ever-changing landscape of storage challenges faced by OEMs, resellers and IT professionals."

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.