SAS Demonstrations Highlight Performance, Scalability and Flexibility Benefits

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, March 1, 2005 – The SCSI Trade Association (STA), a member-run industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, is exhibiting in the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Storage Community area in booth number 104. In addition, many STA member companies are exhibiting Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) products and technology at IDF (see STA member list with booth numbers on page two).

STA’s two live SAS system demonstrations showcase (1) SAS Performance and (2) SAS Scalability and Flexibility. The SAS performance demonstration is the first-ever to span a single RAID array across multiple SAS controllers. The RAID-on-Chip SAS controller offers eight SAS/Serial ATA (SATA) ports and both PCI-X and PCI-Express interfaces. Twelve 15K RPM disk drives are among the components enabling the system’s 1GB/sec sustained transfer rate, the fastest demonstration of a SAS system to date. The drives can each sustain up to 93.3MB/sec, providing a combined total of 1GB/sec throughput.

The SAS Scalability and Flexibility demonstration points out how a SAS system can easily be scaled to meet increasing storage needs. In addition to the PCI-X to eight-port SAS host bus adapter, the key scalability components are the 12-port and 36-port SAS Expanders. SAS 15K RPM and SATA 7200 RPM disk drives complete the system, which operates at 3Gb/sec.

Harry Mason, President of STA and Director of Industry Marketing for LSI Logic, stated, “SAS is market-ready after three years of planning, developing and promoting the technology as well as educating the industry about its advantages. SAS is expected to see rapid market adoption and promises to become very prominent in enterprise storage markets, consisting of servers, disk drives and external storage subsystems. The three interoperability plugfests held in 2004 have provided a great deal of impetus toward meeting these objectives.”

“Serial Attached SCSI has begun to see OEM adoption since products started entering the market last fall,” said Dave Reinsel, Director, Storage Research for IDC. “Major product roll-outs are expected during the first half of 2005 and we expect to see SAS products in the indirect channels during the first quarter. Industry interest will grow stronger based upon the desire to integrate denser solutions using 2.5″ enterprise-class disk drives in RAID 5 configurations.”

After entering the market in the second half of 2004, the rate of SAS product introduction is accelerating with the expectation that by mid-2005, a significant number of products will be available. SAS market readiness marks the culmination of three years of technology development, interoperability testing, product development and manufacturing. SAS products are ready for market due, in part, to three successful 2004 plugfests that were timed to coincide with the SAS development schedule. Additional plugfests are planned for 2005.

Attention Press and Analysts

• STA, exhibiting in the IDF Storage Community, will be represented by Martin Czekalski, VP of STA and Interface Architecture Initiatives Manager, Maxtor, who will give a 15-minute presentation at 10:00am on Thurs., March 3, titled, “SAS in the Enterprise Data Center.” It will be held in the Storage Community auditorium.
• “High Speed Serial Signaling for Storage,” a class which STA member, Intel, is presenting, will be held in room 2002 on Thurs., March 3, at 2:30pm.
• STA booth visitors will be able to sign up for the free SAS e-mail newsletter, Serial Storage Wire, published by STA. The newsletter covers SAS technology.

STA member companies contributing to STA’s IDF booth support are Broadcom, Hitachi GST, LSI Logic and PMC-Sierra. The demonstrations were configured and staged by the four contributors using their components, as follows:

Performance Demonstration

Broadcom: The RAID-on-Chip SAS controller offers eight SAS/SATA ports, both PCI-X and PCI-Express interfaces, and has the ability to span RAID across multiple controllers (the feature which enables the demo).
Hitachi GST: Twelve 15K RPM Prototype SAS interface drives achieve the combined transfer rate of 1GB/sec.

Scalability and Flexibility Demonstration

LSI Logic: PCI-X to eight-port SAS host bus adapter and 12-port SAS Expander.
PMC-Sierra: 36-port SAS Expander.
Hitachi GST: 15K RPM Prototype SAS interface drives and 7200 RPM, 3Gb/s SATA interface drives. Drive enclosure courtesy of Adaptec.

STA Member Companies Exhibiting SAS Products at IDF

Adaptec, booth 307
Broadcom, booth 302
Catalyst Enterprises, booth 519
Finisar, booth 415
Fujitsu Computer Products of America, booth 102
LeCroy, booth 610
LSI Logic, booths 509 and 906
Maxtor drives can be seen in partner booths: Broadcom-302, Enlight-837,
LSI Logic-906 and Promise-201
Seagate Technology, booth 310

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 promotes the understanding and use of SCSI technology and influences the evolution of SCSI standards to meet future industry needs. The Association has a nine-member Board of Directors that oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees and all STA activities. To subscribe to Serial Storage Wire, STA’s free Serial Attached SCSI newsletter, please visit: www.serialstoragewire.com. For more information, please visit the STA web site at www.scsita.org, send an email to info@scsita.org or call the STA office at (415) 561-6273.

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For further information, contact:
SCSI Trade Association
Lea Schwartz
(970) 225-3753
pointpr@qwest.net