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For RAID and Serial ATA (SATA), Shuttle is relying on the HighPoint HPT372 RAID controller along with the Marvell 88i8030-TBC parallel to serial converters or simply Marvell 88i8030 Serial ATA Bridge. This particular Marvell Bridge has the nifty property that it can be used bidirectionally for converting parallel into serial ATA and vice versa, in other words, the same IC can be used to adapt parallel drives to a serial interface or the other way around, that is to hook up a serial drive to a parallel interface. In the extreme case, two Marvell chips can be used to hook up a parallel controller and a parallel drive through a serial ATA cable with all benefits of serial ATA cables except for the speed.

The RAID / SATA interface of the AK37GTR. The Marvell 88i8030 Serial ATA Bridge chips serialize the 16 bit bidirectional command and data path of parallel ATA into a full duplex serial interface.

Other Connectors

Just like everybody else, the AK37GTR has an infrared interface on board, as well as Wake-On-LAN functionality. Aside from the standard ATX I/O panel connectors, the AK37GTR features a 10-100T base RJ45 Ethernet port on top of the two USB 2.0 connectors in the back panel, powered by the VIA VT6103 Ethernet controller. USB 2.0 is natively supported by the chipset and we have two more headers for two USB 2.0 ports each but that's pretty much it. In the end, it is refreshing to see a board without SmartCard reader interface and other connectors of dubious value that drive up production cost without adding value for most consumers.

Jumpers

The AK37GTR is jumperless almost to the true sense of the word with the two exceptions of the Clear CMOS and the BIOS Flash protection jumpers. Everything else is accessible via BIOS settings.

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