Serial Attached SCSI Working Group Selects STA to Support Development and Promotion of Serial Technology

Monterey, CA., Feb. 4, 2002 — The SCSI Trade Association (STA), a member-run industry group established to support and promote SCSI technology, and the Serial Attached SCSI Working Group today announced that STA will define the marketing requirements for the Serial Attached SCSI specification and will promote the technology to the industry. The STA Board of Directors voted unanimously in December to bring Serial Attached SCSI into the organization and to fully support the development and promotion of the technology. Marketing and business development teams from the two groups met in Houston at the STA annual meeting on January 16 to finalize the details.

Serial Attached SCSI enhances the Serial ATA interface with proven SCSI robustness and versatility to support a wide range of storage I/O products.

Serial Attached SCSI Working Group members include Adaptec (Nasdaq: ADPT), Compaq (NYSE: CPQ), Crossroads Systems (Nasdaq: CRDS), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Eurologic Systems, Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702), HP (NYSE: HWP), Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), IBM, I-TECH Corp., KnowledgeTek, LSI Logic (NYSE: LSI), Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (Nasdaq: MRVL), Maxtor (NYSE: MXO), Molex (Nasdaq: MOLX), QLogic (Nasdaq: QLGC), Seagate, ServerWorks Corp., a Broadcom Company (Nasdaq: BRCM), Silicon Image (Nasdaq: SIMG) and Western Digital (NYSE: WDC).

Harry Mason, President of the STA Board of Directors stated, “STA is delighted that the Serial Attached SCSI Working Group selected our organization to promote this initiative. A natural extension of STA’s charter is to define a compelling roadmap for direct-attach storage interfaces. The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) T10 committee will assume responsibility for advancing the Serial Attached SCSI specification in concert with advances in Parallel SCSI.”

“As the industry’s foremost source of SCSI expertise, STA is committed to driving the market development and promotion of the new Serial Attached SCSI specification, validating this emerging technology, and delivering the benefits of Serial Attached SCSI to the industry and the end user,” said Ian Williams, executive sponsor, Serial Attached SCSI Working Group. “The Working Group is confident that through STA’s direction the numerous benefits of Serial Attached SCSI, such as the flexibility to run both ATA and SCSI together seamlessly in the same environment, will be effectively communicated and driven to industry standardization.”

The Serial Attached SCSI Working Group plans to transfer the Serial Attached SCSI specification development project to the INCITS T10 committee in May 2002, with approval to follow within 12 months. INCITS develops American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards. Please visit the Serial Attached SCSI web site at http://www.SerialAttachedSCSI.com for more information.

About STA
The SCSI Trade Association was established in 1995 to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of SCSI to the industry. STA also promotes the understanding and use of SCSI technology and influences the evolution of the standard to meet future industry needs. The Association has an eleven-member Board of Directors, which oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees. For more information, please visit the web site at http://www.scsita.org, email info@scsita.org, call the STA office at (415) 561-6273 or send a fax to (415) 561-6120. Technical questions for the SCSI Expert may be submitted by filling out the form on the STA web site (click on SCSI Expert). Questions will be answered via email.

About Serial Attached SCSI Working Group
The Serial Attached SCSI Working Group is an independent, open, industry consortium to develop a new interconnect specification for SCSI. The mission of the Serial Attached SCSI Working Group is to lead the industry in defining a new serial point-to-point enterprise device attach interface, leveraging the SCSI protocol set and supporting a wide range of price/performance storage products. The Working Group is an open forum and actively encourages participation and contribution from additional technology companies towards developing the new specification. Please visit the Serial Attached SCSI Working Group web site at http://www.SerialAttachedSCSI.com for more information.

###

The STA logo is a trademark of the SCSI Trade Association.