FCLC-Member Companies Now Have Over Two Thirds of Disk Drive Market Share As Western Digital & Fujitsu Join Fibre Channel Loop Community; The support of Western Digital and Fujitsu extends the widespread acceptance of the FC-AL interface standard.

SARATOGA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 29, 1996--The growing momentum of the Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) serial interface standard continues as the enterprise storage disk drive division of Western Digital and the disk drive division of Fujitsu Limited join the Fibre Channel Loop Community (FCLC) in support of the standard. According to market research firm Dataquest (1), membership of these two disk drive companies in the FCLC extends overall market share of FCLC-member disk drive companies to over two thirds of the entire disk drive industry. No other industry association representing serial interfaces approaches the market share of those supporting FC-AL.

"Western Digital's Enterprise Storage Group is pleased to support the FC-AL serial interface," said Tom Porter, Western Digital's vice president of research and development. "FC-AL is a natural evolution for Western Digital's continuing investment in Fibre Channel technology and we believe FC-AL is an excellent choice for high-speed connectivity in large enterprise applications. Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop provides exceptional bandwidth and overall performance, which has been affirmed by strong support communicated by our customers."

"Fujitsu is committed to supporting Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop in response to our customers' needs," said Tadashi Hasegawa, senior vice president and general manager of Fujitsu's Manufacturing and Engineering Group.

The addition of the Western Digital and Fujitsu disk drive divisions raises the total number of FCLC-member and observing companies to 47, making the community the largest and one of the most recognized serial interface groups in the computer industry. The growing list of FCLC member and observing companies represents a broad array of computer industry leaders, ranging from systems and component manufacturers to testing equipment designers and consultants.

The current list of companies affiliated with the FCLC includes: -0-

Adaptec Inc.                     ENDL Associates
AMCC                             Fujitsu Limited (2)
AMI                              Gadzoox Communications (2)
AMP Inc.                         Gainbery Computer Products (2)
Ancot                            Hewlett Packard
Applied Digital Systems          I-Tech
Box Hill Systems                 IBM (3)
BusLogic Inc.                    Interphase
CLARiiON/Data General            Intel
Ciprico                          Jaycor
Compaq Corporation               LSI Logic
Conner Peripherals               Madison Cable (2)
Cyber Storage Systems (2)        Methode Electronics (2)
Digital Equipment Corp.          Motorola
DPT                              Mountaingate (2)
Emulex                           Mylex

National Semiconductor
Parity Systems (2)
Peer Protocols
PTI (2), (3)
Q-Logic
Quantum Corporation
Seagate Technology, Inc.
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Systems (2)
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Symbios Logic Inc.
Texas Instruments
Unisys
Vitesse Semiconductor
Western Digital Corp.

"We are pleased to see Western Digital and Fujitsu affiliated with the Fibre Channel Loop Community," said Mike Fitzpatrick, chairman of the FCLC and Product Marketing Manager at Seagate Technology. "These two companies contribute to the strength of the FCLC as a whole, which serves as a springboard for sharing information and technology regarding the design and implementation of computer systems and components utilizing the FC-AL serial interface."

Western Digital and Fujitsu membership builds on the tremendous success of the Fibre Channel Loop Community in facilitating computer industry support of the FC-AL standard. One example of the overwhelmingly positive response to the Fibre Channel Loop Community's efforts was evident at Fall COMDEX 1995, where over 6,500 attendees visited the FCLC suite at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The suite featured displays representing products in development or currently available from fourteen FLC-member companies. The demonstrations presented the relative simplicity of the Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop interface, as well as its fault tolerance, high bandwidth, and rich variety of connectivity options.

The FCLC is committed to building awareness and understanding about the Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) interface standard, its technology, and related products. With FC-AL, system designers can integrate a low-cost storage interface capable of providing bandwidth of up to 100 Mbytes/second for 126 devices in a single loop (or 200 Mbtyes/second in a dual loop configuration), with up to 10 kilometers distance between each device. FC-AL is the only storage interface capable of delivering this degree of performance at such great distances within a campus environment. Fully fault- tolerant and providing exceptional resiliency, FC-AL is the ideal interface for such disk-intensive, user-intensive applications as network-attached storage, data mirroring across a campus environment, video-on-demand, networked non-linear video editing, high-end disk array subsystems, and medical imaging.

Membership in the Fibre Channel Loop Community is available to all interested companies and educational institutions. The FCLC was formed in June of 1995 to promote and proliferate FC-AL technology and its applications. THe FCLC supports the advancement of FC-AL technologies, fosters FC-AL interoperability and provides an industry forum for discussion of FC-AL integration and development issues. To receive membership, educational, and promotional materials, contact the FCLC at 408/867-1385, or the FaxAccess system at 408/741-1600 and order menu item No. 6. The FLC can also be reached on the worldwide web at http://www.tachyon.rose.hp.com/fclc.

(1) Dataquest Alert: Disk Drive Industry Status, December 8, 1995 (2) New member/observing company since Fall/COMDEX `95. (3) Observing company.

CONTACT: Seagate Technology

Tyson Heyn, 408/439-2859