Adaptec Invigorates External Storage Market; Two New RAID Controllers Combine Leadership Performance, Robust Software Features, and Management Support.MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 28, 1998--Adaptec (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :ADPT ADPT Automated Data Processing/Telecommunications ADPT Adaptec Corporation (stock symbol) ADPT Adaptive Prediction ADPT Auger Depth Profiling Technique ADPT Automated Data Processing Telecommunications ADPT Adapter ) announced two new next-generation products in its family of Ultra2 SCSI and Fibre Channel external RAID controllers. The new controllers distinguish themselves with sustained RAID 5 data transfer rates of 68 MB/s and 5,500 IOPs(1); advanced software features such as active-active controller failover, online capacity expansion, spare pooling, and easy configuration and management support options; and increased connectivity. NT servers, mid-range UNIX servers, and clustered environments require flagship performance, robust software features, and scaleability. OEMs, system integrators, and resellers require the same for their business applications: video processing, data imaging, OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) See transaction processing and OLCP. OLTP - On-Line Transaction Processing (online transaction processing See transaction processing and OLCP. ), data warehousing and mining, and database management. Adaptec's new controllers -- the AEC-7313 and the AEC-5312 -- provide features that empower those systems, configurations, and customers with greater reliability, availability and serviceability Reliability, Availability and Serviceability is a computer hardware engineering term. It originated from IBM to advertise the robustness of their mainframe computers. The concept is often known by the acronym RAS. , and the ability to use either Ultra2 SCSI or Fibre Channel host or management interfaces, all of which are paramount in today's performance- and information-driven data age. These features and the controllers' performance also pave the way for the reality of new implementations such as storage area networks. "Adaptec continues to raise the bar and lead the industry in external storage controllers," said Bob Graham, president of the storage systems division at Adaptec, Inc. "As users migrate to NT, implement clustering, and contemplate the storage area network, Adaptec is there with solutions that provide features and performance to solve business problems." About External Storage Subsystems External storage subsystems are storage arrays -- groups of hard disk drives linked together in redundant fashion -- that are connected to a host system, or server, and provide high availability, performance, and capacity to the end user. The external storage subsystem provides RAID functionality and is connected to the host system via an input/output (I/O (Input/Output) The transfer of data between the CPU and a peripheral device. Every transfer is an output from one device and an input to another. See PC input/output. I/O - Input/Output ) connection, usually SCSI SCSI in full Small Computer System Interface Once common standard for connecting peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, etc.) to small and medium-sized computers. SCSI has given way to faster standards, such as Firewire and USB. or Fibre Channel. External storage controllers manage the external subsystem disks and act as an intelligent conduit between a host system (PC or UNIX server) and the external storage system. Adaptec distinguishes itself in the external storage market by providing a conduit connection "on both ends of the wire," that is, in both the host with its adapters and the system with its external storage controllers. This enables vendors to realize the benefits of one-stop shopping and compatible interfaces. External storage systems allow IS departments to upgrade servers without jeopardizing their existing storage investments. External storage subsystems are popular because they offer increased system availability and capacity, do not burden the host's CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. for RAID processing, and are operating system independent. Three market trends are fueling the demand for external storage: the migration of mission-critical applications to PC servers, which puts new availability and fault tolerant burdens on them; the advent of clustering, which is better served by external storage than by host-based storage; and the rate of change of host server technologies. Because of these trends, external storage subsystems, which are widely used by mainframe and UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). customers, are now required by Adaptec's PC server customers. About the products The AEC-5312 controller supports one Ultra2 SCSI host channel and two Ultra2 device channels. The AEC-7313 supports one Fibre Channel host interface and three Ultra2 SCSI device channels. Both controllers support legacy Ultra SCSI single ended devices by auto-detecting the SCSI interface implemented. (Adaptec also makes Ultra2 SCSI and Fibre Channel host adapters.) This new generation of AEC AEC US Atomic Energy Commission Noun 1. AEC - a former executive agency (from 1946 to 1974) that was responsible for research into atomic energy and its peacetime uses in the United States Atomic Energy Commission controllers provides leadership performance through implementation of Adaptec's AEC-2100 SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) A type of dynamic RAM (DRAM) memory chip that has been widely used since the late 1990s. SDRAM chips eliminated wait states by dividing the chip into two cell blocks and interleaving data between them. dual-PCI XOR (eXclusive OR) A Boolean logic operation that is widely used in cryptography as well as in generating parity bits for error checking and fault tolerance. XOR compares two input bits and generates one output bit. The logic is simple. If the bits are the same, the result is 0. memory controller that also improves data integrity through ECC (1) (Error-Correcting Code) A type of memory that corrects errors on the fly. See ECC memory. (2) (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) A public key cryptography method that provides fast decryption and digital signature processing. on the controllers' cache memory. Both controllers support 80 MB/s Ultra2 SCSI host and device channel performance. The AEC-5312 supports 80 MB/s host channel performance. The AEC-7313 supports 100 MB/s Fibre Channel host connection performance. The AEC-5312's Ultra2 SCSI host channel is field upgradeable to an AEC-7313 Fibre Channel through an optional add-in daughtercard See daughterboard. daughtercard - daughterdboard . Equally compelling, the products also offer a sophisticated RAID core software package that includes industry unique features: multi-initiator support, active-active controller failover with input/output data path redundancy, on-line capacity expansion, spare pools and dedicated spares, and reserve/release for clustered applications. These powerful software features enable greater system and information uptime and availability, the ability to manipulate storage in ways that traditional RAID does not allow, and the capability to support forthcoming storage applications such as clustering and storage area networks. The two adapters also include easy configuration and management support options including Adaptec CI/O Management Software, inband GUI (Graphical User Interface) A graphics-based user interface that incorporates movable windows, icons and a mouse. The ability to resize application windows and change style and size of fonts are the significant advantages of a GUI vs. a character-based interface. through the host's interface, and third party implementation of GUI utilities with Adaptec's API Developer's Kit. These options enable greater ease of use, scaleability, and the ability to identify and correct storage problems with little troubleshooting or repair time. The products are aimed at system and storage OEMs and are, by the very nature of external storage, operating system (OS)-independent. They support RAID levels 0, 1, 0/1, 3, 4, 5, and JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) A group of hard disks in a computer that are not set up as any type of RAID configuration. They are just a bunch of disks. JBOD - Just a Bunch Of Disks (industry jargon for "just a bunch of disks See JBOD. (jargon, storage) Just a Bunch Of Disks - (JBOD, or "Just a Bunch of Drives") A storage subsystems using multiple independent disk drives, as opposed to one form of RAID or another. " implying that they are not configured as a RAID array.) Pricing and availability Both products are available immediately in limited quantities to Adaptec OEMs. Full production and global availability to OEMs will happen in late June 1998. OEM evaluation kits including the controller, software, a backplane break-out board, cables, and documentation are available for $1800 for the AEC-5312 and for $1950 for the AEC-7313. About Adaptec Adaptec provides bandwidth management technologies for organizations building the global information infrastructure. Its high-performance I/O, connectivity, and network products are incorporated into the systems and products of major computer and peripheral manufacturers. Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Milpitas, Adaptec (NASDAQ:ADPT) employs 3500 people worldwide in design, manufacturing, sales, service and distribution. Adaptec's home page is http://www.adaptec.com. -0- 1) Using Intel's Iometer benchmarking performance tool.
CONTACT: Adaptec, Inc.
Eric Brown, 408/957-6645
ebrown@corp.adaptec.com
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