6Gb/s SAS Tachyon Controller Family Sets New Benchmark with up to 16 Ports
and More Than 750,000 IOPS

SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 15, 2011 – PMC-Sierra, Inc., (“PMC”) (Nasdaq:PMCS), the network semiconductor innovator, today introduced its latest generation of SAS/SATA protocol controllers, which doubles the performance and port density of existing solutions. The
Tachyon® SPCv family sets the industry performance benchmark for enterprise storage systems, delivering more than 750,000 I/Os per second (IOPS), integrating 16 ports and supporting advanced data protection. The trend toward solid state drives (SSDs), which can provide a greater than 100x increase in IOPS compared to traditional hard disk drives (HDDs), is dramatically increasing performance requirements for enterprise storage systems. The Tachyon SPCv controller’s innovative multi-core architecture enables storage equipment manufacturers to take full advantage of SSD performance.

“PMC has shipped over 74 million 6Gb/s SAS ports in our controller and expander product lines, substantially more than our nearest competitor, and six of the top seven storage systems OEMs have architected platforms around PMC’s 6Gb/s SAS Tachyon controller products,” said
Derek Dicker, vice president of marketing for PMC’s Enterprise Storage Division. “The combination of industry-leading performance and port density in our new SPCv controller family positions PMC to extend our market segment leadership in enterprise storage.”

The Tachyon SPCv family includes the PM8008 SPCv 8x6G and PM8018 SPCv 16x6G, offering eight and sixteen 6Gb/s SAS ports, respectively. The controllers comply with the
6Gb/s SAS-2.1 specification, support the emerging PCIe® 3.0 system interface, and include hardware acceleration for the industry-standard T-10 (INCITS) data protection scheme. These features enable SAS-based storage systems to meet the advanced data integrity and performance requirements of demanding enterprise IT environments.

“Storage system capacities and complexity are increasing as system vendors incorporate more SSDs and 2.5-inch Small Form-Factor HDDs in their latest external storage enclosures,”
said Shane Rau, research director, Computing and Storage Semiconductors, IDC. “This is driving the need for higher performance and greater connectivity at the controller level to reduce hardware complexity and cost.”

The SPCv controllers, combined with PMC’s existing Tachyon Fibre Channel and SAS/SATA protocol controllers, maxSAS™ SAS expanders and SPS active/active multiplexers, further strengthen PMC’s position as the only enterprise storage silicon vendor to offer an end-to-end enterprise-class chipset solution (see Figure 1).

The Tachyon SPCv controller family integrates several leading-edge features, including:

Availability
The PM8008 Tachyon SPCv 8x6G and PM8018 Tachyon SPCv 16x6G devices are available now to select OEM partners. For further information, including datasheets and pricing, please visit www.pmc-sierra.com/storage or contact PMC at sales@pmc-sierra.com.

About PMC’s Storage Products
PMC is a leading provider of enterprise storage system solutions for networked (SAN/NAS) and server storage applications, with a broad portfolio SAS/SATA and Fibre Channel protocol controllers, RAID controllers and SAS and FC disk interconnect products. PMC’s Tachyon protocol controllers, Fibre Channel loop switches, enclosure management controllers and maxSAS expander switches and multiplexers provide the industry’s most comprehensive solution for enterprise-class storage systems. Together, these products are providing end-to-end semiconductor and software solutions to the industry’s leading storage OEMs and ODMs.
For more information visit http://www.pmc-sierra.com/storage.

About PMC
PMC (Nasdaq:PMCS) is the semiconductor innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store digital content. Building on a track record of technology leadership, we are driving innovation across storage, optical and mobile networks. Our highly integrated solutions increase performance and enable next generation services to accelerate the network transformation.
For more information visit www.pmc-sierra.com.

Attachments
Figure 1: PMC’s End-to-End Enterprise Storage Chipset Solution
For figures visit: http://www.pmc-sierra.com/news_room/pdf/SPCv_figure.pdf
For photos visit: http://www.pmc-sierra.com/news_room/images/SPCv.jpg

Resources to Extend your Product Knowledge and Understanding
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© Copyright PMC-Sierra, Inc. 2011. All rights reserved. PMC, PMC-SIERRA, Tachyon and “Enabling connectivity. Empowering people.” are registered trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc. in the United States and other countries, PMCS and maxSAS are trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.