COSTA MESA, Calif., Jan. 26, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), the market leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and a leading supplier of intelligent building blocks for next generation storage networking systems, announced today its 4 Gb/s InSpeedTM SOC 422 Fibre Channel embedded storage switch, marking its entry into the next generation of storage area networks (SANs). Emulex has delivered sample silicon to its key OEM partners and expects to begin production shipments within the next year. The Emulex InSpeed SOC (Switch-On-a-Chip) 422 is the industry's first 4 Gb/s embedded storage switching solution, providing 22 ports of connectivity in a highly integrated device that is ideal for implementing a wide variety of embedded storage applications, including SBODs (Switched Bunch of Disks), Root Switches and Fully Switched Architectures. Eight of the world's leading storage OEMs are currently evaluating or integrating the SOC 422.
Emulex's award-winning, field-proven InSpeed embedded storage switching technology enhances the reliability, serviceability, and performance by bringing switched connectivity inside the storage system. With the introduction of its third generation 4 Gb/s InSpeed technology, Emulex has increased both the speed and port count of its embedded storage switch technologies. In addition, the SOC 422 supports in-band communications, eliminating the necessity for a costly external processor for SCSI Enclosure Services (SES) and lowering OEM implementation costs by more than 50 percent over previous generations.
"As the first Company to deliver 4 Gb/s embedded storage switching technology, Emulex is uniquely positioned to enable our customers to accelerate the time to market of their next generation disk array and tape storage systems," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corp. "The broad acceptance of Emulex's new InSpeed SOC 422 within the storage OEM community demonstrates that embedded storage switching has progressed to become a mainstream element in the design of leading OEM storage solutions."
Emulex is poised to deliver a broad range of storage networking building blocks for next generation OEM systems, including I/O controllers, embedded storage switches and host bus adapters. The SOC 422 is the first of Emulex's broad product portfolio designed to support the 4 Gb/s standard, which is expected to emerge as the dominant SAN technology for next-generation disk and tape storage systems within the next year.
In addition to leading the way in 4 Gb/s technology, Emulex was the first HBA provider to demonstrate 10 Gb/s Fibre Channel, showcasing its 10 Gb/s technology solutions with both Cisco and McDATA at the Fall Storage Networking World in October 2003, in addition to an earlier demonstration at Comdex in November 2002. Ten Gb/s Fibre Channel technology is expected to provide enterprise data centers with unmatched levels in performance, with deployments beginning in the 2005 - 2006 timeframe. The 10 Gb/s Fibre Channel data rate, which can be deployed in SANs, or integrated as a backbone for existing SANs, will also enable continued scaling of enterprise environments.
InSpeed SOC 422 Highlights
The InSpeed SOC 422 features a completely non-blocking, dynamically switching, crossbar switch core. Dynamic switching allows connection of any port to any port to deliver unmatched internal bandwidth and redundancy for increasing storage system performance and RAS characteristics. Key features and capabilities provided by the InSpeed SOC 422 are:
-- 22 ports run at 4, 2 or 1 Gb/s speeds
-- Automatic Trunking fully multiplies throughput and bandwidth with
-- fail-over pathing
-- In-band communications lower OEM implementation costs more than
50 percent over previous generations by eliminating expensive
specialized external processor requirements for SES
-- Fairness and Prioritization ensures devices have guaranteed
access to all other devices, eliminating "drive starvation"
-- Advanced Diagnostics, Performance Monitoring and Fault Isolation
ensure storage system availability is maximized
-- Compatible with InSpeed embedded storage switches and previous
generation InSpeed SOCs
-- A common InSpeed API ensures continued ease of implementation for
OEM customers
Emulex's InSpeed SOC 422 technology can be implemented in both Root Switch and SBOD applications. Root Switch applications place switched connectivity between the storage controller (or NAS head) and the drive shelves within the storage system. An SBOD application places switched connectivity between the controller and each individual drive. Both Root Switch and SBOD applications bring increased levels of fault isolation and dynamic recovery to the storage system, enable new levels of diagnostics and the scaling of drive counts without impacting performance. In a "Fully Switched" back-end architecture, both Root Switch and SBOD applications are used to deliver an ultra-reliable, high performance solution.
Supporting Industry Comments
Through numerous associations with key industry players, which include SAN technology suppliers, leading server and storage solution providers and premier semiconductor technology companies, Emulex is leveraging its position as a leading provider of building blocks for intelligent storage networking to simplify the implementation of SANs and help drive the adoption of next generation 4 Gb/s storage technologies.
"Fujitsu Ltd. has already used Emulex's InSpeed technology to successfully create ultra-reliable SBOD based switched back-end architectures in both its mid-range ETERNUS 3000 storage offering and, most recently, its high-end ETERNUS 6000 enterprise storage solution line--which can scale beyond a thousand drives and still deliver increased performance levels," said Mr. Koichi Ueda, general manager, storage system development division, storage systems group, Fujitsu Limited. "We will be evaluating Emulex's new 4 Gb/s InSpeed SOC 422. Fujitsu Ltd. has developed an excellent collaborative relationship with Emulex's InSpeed customer engineering team and we are looking forward working with Emulex as 4 Gb/s technologies take shape in the storage industry."
"As 4 Gb/s technology moves into the mainstream, Intel is working with Emulex and others in the industry to make this new storage technology a reality," said Tom Franz, vice president and general manager of Intel's Communications Infrastructure Group. "First on the agenda for Intel is collaboration with these and other storage product providers to ensure compatibility and interoperability of our planned 4 Gb/s transceivers, which we'll be offering alongside our broad line of 10 Gb/s optical transceivers."
"The combination of Marvell(r)'s industry leading 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel SerDes technology and Emulex's embedded switch solution delivered in a highly integrated SOC enables the leading enterprise storage OEMs to achieve higher port densities and performance," said Balaji Baktha, general manager of Marvell's Embedded and Emerging Business Unit. "We are confident the storage OEMs will benefit from this solution."
"Solutions that use next-generation 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel technology will enable IT professionals to deploy network storage solutions that will provide the additional bandwidth needed to manage ever-increasing data growth levels," said Bill Schilling, Seagate Technology marketing director. "Seagate is actively involved with companies such as Emulex to provide a seamless transition to 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel."
"Xyratex views Emulex's next generation 4Gb/s InSpeed embedded storage switch as an integral part of our commitment to delivering cutting-edge storage solutions to our customers," said John Howarth, senior director of product marketing, Xyratex Storage Systems. "The Xyratex RS-1600 switched JBOD (SBOD) was the first commercially available storage enclosure deployed with Emulex's SOC 320 2 Gb/s InSpeed technology, and we are excited about integrating Emulex's new 4Gb/s InSpeed SOC 422 technology. Our customers view embedded storage switching products as the future of storage enclosures and Xyratex is excited to be working with Emulex to deliver these solutions to our customers."
To find out more about how InSpeed technology and the new InSpeed SOC 422 enhance the RAS and performance characteristics of storage systems, please visit www.emulex.com.
About Emulex
Emulex Corporation is the world leader in Fibre Channel HBAs and delivers a broad range of intelligent building blocks for next generation storage networking systems. Emulex was named one of Forbes Magazine's 25 Fastest Growing Technology Companies, and ranked number 15 in Deloitte & Touche's 2003 Technology Fast 50.
The world's leading server and storage providers rely on Emulex HBAs, embedded storage switching and I/O controller products to build reliable, scalable and high performance storage solutions. The Emulex award-winning product families, including its LightPulse(tm) HBAs and InSpeedTM embedded storage switching products, are based on internally developed ASIC, firmware and software technologies, and offer customers high performance, scalability, flexibility and reduced total cost of ownership. The company's products have been selected by the world's leading server and storage providers, including Dell, EMC, Fujitsu Ltd., Fujitsu Siemens, Groupe Bull, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance, StorageTek, Sun Microsystems and Unisys. In addition, Emulex includes industry leaders Brocade, Computer Associates, Intel, McDATA, Microsoft and VERITAS among its strategic partners. Corporate headquarters are located in Costa Mesa, California. News releases and other information about Emulex Corporation are available at http://www.emulex.com.
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