Agilent Technologies Receives Microsoft's 'Designed for Windows 2000' Certification For PCI-to-Fibre Channel Host Adapter.

Business Editors and High Tech Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 2000

Tachyon TL Host Adapter Product Certified for "Storage" Category

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced that its HHBA-5101 PCI-to-Fibre Channel host adapter has earned the Microsoft(R) "Designed for Windows 2000" logo in both the "Cluster/Fibre Channel Adapter" and "Storage/Fibre Channel Adapter" categories. The HHBA-5101 is a member of Agilent's Tachyon family of market-leading Fibre Channel host adapters and protocol controller ICs for the storage area network (SAN) market.

The "Designed for Windows 2000" logo indicates that the HHBA-5101 Fibre Channel host bus adapter has met or exceeded stringent compatibility testing requirements established by Microsoft. Compatibility with Windows(R) 2000 in a Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) environment will give IT professionals more flexibility to implement SANs in high availability, Windows 2000 environments. The HHBA-5101 is now listed on the Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), found at www.microsoft.com/hcl/default.asp.

"We recognize the importance of the Windows 2000 and Windows NT(R) environments in the SAN marketplace," said Bob Whitson, marketing manager of Agilent's SAN Products Operation. "We will continue to work closely with Microsoft to achieve `Designed for Windows 2000' status for all of our current and future Fibre Channel host adapters."

The HHBA-5101 is available from Agilent and Adaptec. The two companies recently announced an alliance to co-develop, market, and sell Fibre Channel host adapters for x86-based servers. Agilent, a leading supplier of Fibre Channel products and Adaptec, a leading presence in the Windows NT server and workstation market, will enhance Fibre Channel solutions for the fast-growing Windows 2000 server market.

Agilent Tachyon TL Host Adapters

The Agilent HHBA-5100 and HHBA-5101 are 32- and 64-bit, 33-MHz PCI Fibre Channel host adapters that are optimized for SAN applications. They are compliant with FC-AL-2 and PCI Local Bus specification 2.1, and support FC-AL Class 3 service and full-duplex operation with parallel inbound and outbound processing. The HHBA-5100 and HHBA-5101 support both Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) and Fabric (F- and FL- Port Login) connections.

The HHBA-5101 is based on Agilent's industry-leading Tachyon Fibre Channel architecture. This state machine architecture uses hardware automation -- the fastest method of managing I/O operations -- to execute Fibre Channel protocol and SCSI command operations. Unlike the performance of RISC-based Fibre Channel architectures, the performance of the Agilent Tachyon architecture is not limited by the bandwidth of an embedded RISC processor. Its performance increases linearly when higher-performance system processors are employed (typically an Intel Pentium(R)-class processor or high-performance RISC processor).

Drivers are available for Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, Novell NetWare, SCO UnixWare, Solaris x86, and Linux. These drivers employ interrupt-avoidance techniques that reduce the number of CPU interrupts to one or fewer per I/O operation -- freeing the host CPU to spend more time processing applications.

The HHBA-5101 offers system vendors significant configuration flexibility by providing a gigabit interface connector (GBIC) which enables either a copper or optical Fibre Channel connection.

Further information about these products can be found on the Web at www.agilent.com/view/fibrechannel.

About Agilent Technologies

Agilent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: A) is a diversified technology company, resulting from Hewlett-Packard Company's plan to strategically realign itself into two fully independent companies. With 42,000 employees serving customers in more than 120 countries, Agilent Technologies is a global leader in designing and manufacturing test, measurement and monitoring instruments, systems and solutions, and semiconductor and optical components. The company serves markets that include communications, electronics, life sciences and healthcare. The businesses comprising Agilent, a subsidiary of HP, had net revenues of more than $8.3 billion in fiscal year 1999.

Information about Agilent Technologies can be found on the Web at www.agilent.com.

Note to Editors: Microsoft, Windows and Windows NT are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Pentium is a U.S. registered trademark of Intel Corporation.