Solid Data Systems Announces The World's Fastest Solid State Storage System; Excellerator Ultra Delivers a Data Access Time of Only 14 Microseconds.

SANTA CLARA, Calif..--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 13, 1998--

Excellerator Ultra Family Cost-Effectively Doubles the

Performance of Target Enterprise Application Servers

Solid Data Systems (formerly DES), a leading manufacturer of intelligent solid state storage systems, today introduced the industry's fastest solid state storage systems supporting a high speed Ultra SCSI interface. The new product line, called the Excellerator Ultra family, delivers a data access time of only 14 microseconds, approximately 1000 times faster than typical magnetic disk drives. This extremely fast access time provides a significant performance enhancement to enterprise applications servers, particularly during peak load conditions and demanding batch jobs.

The Excellerator Ultra line can sustain Ultra SCSI data transfer rates of 40 MB/second in both sequential and random activity performance that is unachievable with magnetic disk drive RAID systems. The products scale up to 17.4 GB in a single system, which is more than twice the capacity of any other solid state storage system on the market today.

"In addition to achieving an industry leading access time of 14 microseconds, our new products use Ultra SCSI data rates to cut data transfer times in half," said Gene Bowles, president and chief executive officer of Solid Data. "In the case of an 8K data block, Excellerator Ultra products reduce the transfer time from 410 microseconds to 205 microseconds, delivering a significant increase in data throughput. Our customers are often able to double their I/O-intensive applications' processing capability for an investment of less than 25% of the original server.

"The new Excellerator Ultra products also double the maximum available capacity in the same footprint as the previous Excellerator models," continued Bowles. "The new 1 GB memory board drives down the cost of solid state storage, particularly for high-end applications. The price of a 5 GB system, for example, has been reduced by 15%."

Excellerator Ultra Products Turbocharge Existing JBOD and RAID

Storage Systems

Solid Data's Excellerator Ultra products are self-contained storage systems utilizing DRAM architecture to turbocharge the performance of I/O intensive applications -- such as relational databases (RDBMS), decision support systems (DSS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), online transaction processing (OLTP), Internet services, and digital media -- running on existing JBOD or RAID storage systems. These application environments are ideal candidates for solid state storage because they are typically I/O-limited by a relatively small number of "hot files." Hot files are the high-activity files, typically only 5 to 10% of the total storage, that account for over 50% of all I/O traffic. By moving these hot files to Excellerator Ultra, Solid Data's customers solve I/O bottleneck performance issues at a fraction of the cost of purchasing additional CPUs or disk storage systems.

I/O Dynamics Software Eliminates the Risk of Purchasing Solid

State Storage

Solid Data is the only solid state storage vendor that provides system-level analysis software to take the risk out of making a decision to purchase solid state storage. The Company has developed a proprietary software technology called I/O Dynamics(TM) that analyzes the impact of disk activity on system performance. The expert software identifies hot files in application servers and provides precise information for periodically re-balancing the system after the initial installation. By applying I/O Dynamics in advance of a purchase, the Company's customers can determine beforehand whether their systems are experiencing I/O bottlenecks and, if they are, which files are causing the problems. The analysis also provides a recommendation for the amount of solid state storage required to eliminate bottlenecks and an estimated performance improvement projection from implementing the technology.

Patented Direct Addressing Technology Sets New Benchmark for Data

Access Speed

The 14 microsecond data access time achieved by the Excellerator Ultra products is two to four times faster than competitive solid state storage systems, and it surpasses that of magnetic disk drives which have a typical access time of 9.2 to 14.2 milliseconds -- by approximately 1000 times. The Excellerator Ultra family delivers I/O transaction rates of over 10,000 I/Os per second, compared to the slow 50 I/Os per second performance of standalone disk drives.

There are two reasons for Solid Data's performance advantage. First, Solid Data has developed a patented Direct Addressing(TM) technology. With Direct Addressing, SCSI addresses received from the host are translated directly into DRAM array addresses. The translation uses high-speed dedicated circuits, eliminating intermediate microprocessor-to-insert latencies, overhead, and time delays. Second, with magnetic disk drives, actuator seek and rotational latency comprise 90% of the time that it takes to do a data transfer. With solid state storage, there are no mechanical parts, so the data transfer does not require time for seek or latency. -0-

Product Specifications

                                Excellerator         Excellerator
                                  800 Ultra           1000 Ultra

System Capacities
 Minimum and maximum capacity   536 MB - 5.36 GB     536 MB - 17.36 GB
 Available RAM slots                5                   16
 RAM card options:
    536 MB                          Yes                 Yes
    1.07 GB                         Yes                 Yes

Model Specific Features
 Redundant power supply             Yes                 Yes
 On-board, internal backup drive    Removable           Fixed
 Configurations                     Rack mount or       Rack mount or
                                     desk top            free standing

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Availability, Pricing, and Support

The Excellerator Ultra line is available in two models -- Excellerator 800 and 1000 Ultra. Both models will ship this month. An Excellerator 800 Ultra system with 526 MB of storage capacity has a street price of $25,010. Excellerator 800 Ultra with 5.36 GB has a street price of $78,180. Excellerator 1000 Ultra starts at 1.07 GB and has a street price of $46,610. Excellerator 1000 Ultra scales up to 17.36 GB with a street price of $226,050.

Excellerator Ultra products run on all major Unix and NT hardware platforms and, because they incorporate an industry-standard Ultra SCSI interface, they are readily integrated just like another disk drive. Recognizing the inherent volatile nature of DRAM components, Excellerator Ultra products are designed with a patented Data Retention System(TM) that protects data in the event of a power loss. The Data Retention system provides integral battery backup; an on-board disk drive with a separate data path that is independent of the host CPU; automatic backup control logic; RAIC (redundant array of independent chips); and redundant power supplies.

Solid Data Systems backs its exceptional product quality with a one-year return-to-factory warranty and business-hour telephone support. Optional support services are available including 7x24 telephone support and same day, 4-hour, on-site response.

About Solid Data Systems

Founded in 1993, Solid Data Systems (formerly DES) is a leading manufacturer of intelligent solid state storage systems. The Company's products deliver dramatic, mainframe-level performance improvements to I/O intensive applications such as relational databases (RDBMS), decision support systems, online transaction processing (OLTP), Internet services, and digital media. The Company's Excellerator family of products provides ultra high-speed access to data files, plug-and-play installation, and extremely high reliability. The Excellerator family runs on all major Unix and NT hardware platforms including Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP), Silicon Graphics (NYSE:SGI), Sun (Nasdaq:SUNW), IBM (NYSE:IBM), and Compaq (NYSE:CPQ). The company's headquarters are located at 2945 Oakmead Village Court, Santa Clara, California 95051 and can be reached by phone at [phone], by fax at [phone], and on the Internet at http://www.soliddata.com.