SAN FRANCISCO, March 6, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM -- QLogic(r) Corp. (Nasdaq:QLGC), the leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), today announced it is showcasing its SANblade Pro(tm) family of enterprise 4Gb HBAs at the Intel Developer Forum. SANblade Pro HBAs are designed from the ground up to meet the increased performance demands of multiple applications running on virtualized servers. As a result, SANblade Pro HBAs are a perfect complement to hardware-enabled virtualization (VT) embedded in Intel's new Bensley platform.
"QLogic HBAs stand alone with their capability to scale to wire speed as either the number or size of I/O operations is increased and the percentage of reads and writes is varied. This is especially critical for any site planning to increase resource utilization through server virtualization. The proliferation of virtual servers drives the need for HBAs to simultaneously deliver outstanding read and write performance," said Dr. Jack Fegreus, CTO, Strategic Communications, Inc. and contributing editor to popular storage publications. "Of particular importance were our results modeling a large-scale Microsoft Exchange environment, which stresses an I/O subsystem with a mix of short (4KB) and long (64KB) read and write operations. In our tests with only 66 percent utilization of the SANblade Pro 4Gb HBA, the QLogic HBAs maintained a dominant 83 percent edge in throughput over competitors when processing email transactions."
"Virtualization technology embedded in Bensley enables the platform to run multiple operating systems or applications in independent partitions or 'containers' that can be tailored for specific needs, such as IT management services and protecting networked assets," said Jim Pappas, director of Technology Initiatives, Server Platforms Group, Intel Corporation.
Industry-Leading Performance from QLogic 4Gb HBAs
In independent side-by-side testing, the SANblade Pro 2440 Series single-port HBA achieved more than 100,000 I/Os per second read performance and 150 percent faster write performance than enterprise-class HBAs tested from the primary competitor. The high-end SANblade Pro 2460 Series dual-port HBA achieved even higher performance with a dramatic 304,000 I/Os per second. SANblade Pro HBAs are designed from the ground up to meet the increased performance demands of multiple applications running on virtualized servers.
"A Better 4Gb" HBA
New 4Gb HBAs from QLogic offer a suite of technology advancements that help storage administrators in large enterprises ensure complete business continuity, maintain application performance and cost-effectively scale their networks.
For Better 4Gb Reliability:
-- Overlapping Protection Domains -- This QLogic exclusive
ensures that data is not left unprotected, even for the smallest
fraction of time, by generating a new check of parity or ECC
before stripping out the old check. This offers a superior level
of protection, well beyond traditional implementations.
For Better 4Gb Performance:
-- Intelligent Interleaved DMA -- Unlike competitive round-robin
schemes for transmitting data in a mixed 1Gb / 2Gb / 4Gb
environment, QLogic HBAs detect the link rate that each target
can support and transmit simultaneously, and at maximum
performance, to each storage device.
-- Out Of Order Frame Reassembly -- Only HBAs from QLogic
reassemble frames within an exchange in the correct order,
even though they may have been received out of order. This
improves performance by eliminating the need to retransmit the
entire I/O block.
For Better 4Gb Scalability:
-- Virtual SAN (VSAN) -- This QLogic exclusive allows a single HBA
to read VSAN tags in packets sent from a Cisco MDS switch. As a
result, QLogic HBAs can support multiple VSANs, each with a
completely isolated fabric topology and set of fabric services
including name server, zone server, domain controller, alias
server and login server.
QLogic SANblade Host Bus Adapters -- The Market Share Leader
Storage administrators in large enterprises are trusted with nothing less than ensuring complete business continuity. That's why the most popular SANblade(r) HBA models have field-proven reliability of more than 1.7 million hours mean-time-between-failure. QLogic believes superior reliability is also why according to Dell'Oro, Gartner and IDC, QLogic ranked number one in market share for Fibre Channel HBA ports shipped and Fibre Channel HBA revenue in 2004.
About QLogic
QLogic is the leading supplier of Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), blade server embedded Fibre Channel switches and Fibre Channel stackable switches for storage area networks (SANs). The company is also a leading supplier of iSCSI HBAs. QLogic products are delivered to small, medium and large enterprises around the world, powering solutions from leading companies like Cisco, Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems. QLogic is a member of the S&P 500 Index. For more information visit www.qlogic.com.
Note: All QLogic-issued press releases appear on the Company's website (www.qlogic.com). Any announcement that does not appear on the QLogic website has not been issued by QLogic.
Disclaimer -- Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains statements relating to future results of the Company (including certain beliefs and projections regarding business trends) that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in the forward-looking statements. The Company advises readers that these potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: potential fluctuations in operating results; gross margins that may vary over time; revenues may be affected by changes in IT spending levels; the stock price of the Company may be volatile; the Company's dependence on the storage area network market; the ability to maintain and gain market or industry acceptance of the Company's products; the Company's dependence on a limited number of customers; seasonal fluctuations and uneven sales patterns in orders from customers; the Company's ability to compete effectively with other companies; declining average unit sales prices of comparable products; a reduction in sales efforts by current distributors; reliance on third party licenses; dependence on sole source and limited source suppliers; the Company's dependence on relationships with certain silicon chip suppliers; the complexity of the Company's products; sales fluctuations arising from customer transitions to new products; the uncertainty associated with SOX 404 compliance; environmental compliance costs; terrorist activities and resulting military actions; international, economic, regulatory, political and other risks; uncertain benefits from strategic business combinations; the ability to maintain or expand upon strategic alliances; the strain on resources caused by growth and expansion; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; the decreased effectiveness of equity compensation; difficulties in transitioning to smaller geometry process technologies; the ability to protect proprietary rights; the ability to satisfactorily resolve any infringement claims; changes in tax laws or adverse tax audit results; computer viruses and other tampering with the Company's computer systems; charter documents and stockholder rights plan that may discourage a business combination; and facilities of the Company and its suppliers and customers are located in areas subject to natural disasters.
More detailed information on these and additional factors which could affect the Company's operating and financial results are described in the Company's Forms 10-K, 10-Q and other reports filed, or to be filed, with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company urges all interested parties to read these reports to gain a better understanding of the many business and other risks that the Company faces. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made only as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
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