Top Of The News - Storage:

Marvell and Promise Announce Serial ATA RAID Controller

These new products have been designed into numerous motherboards as well as Promise's own PCI add-in cards, RAID cards and storage systems.

Marvell has collaborated with Promise to develop two-and four-port PCI to Serial ATA host controllers. The devices couple Marvell's industry-leading Serial ATA technology with Promise's widely adopted PCI to ATA RAID controller technology. Promise's extensive software expertise and its substantial sales and support infrastructure help make it the most compelling PCI to Serial ATA solution on the market.

Broad Acceptance of the Marvell and Promise Serial ATA Solution

In just a few short weeks since initial sampling, Promise has secured a large number of motherboards designs from different vendors, six of which showcased multiple product models featuring Serial ATA (SATA) at the recent Computex PC show. Marvell and Promise will be displaying these various motherboard products till June 28th, during Marvell's technology roadshow. The leading motherboard manufacturers who have chosen the Marvell and Promise solution include AOpen, Acorp, Chaintech, Biostar, GIGABYTE, and Micro-Star International Co Ltd.

"Just as Promise led the Ultra ATA interface market since ATA/33 through ATA/133, we are committed to driving the mass adoption of Serial ATA by providing high-performance, cost-effective RAID and non-RAID solutions," commented Sam Sirisena, vice president of Sales and Marketing for Promise Technology, Inc. "The Marvell and Promise collaboration further advances our position as the worldwide leader in Serial ATA RAID by offering the industry's most reliable, highest performance products."

"We are excited about the Marvell and Promise collaborative effort that has brought these chipsets to market," stated Dr. Alan J. Armstrong, Marvell's vice president of marketing for the storage business group. "Promise's extensive ATA RAID expertise and OEM recognition coupled with Marvell's highly advanced, industry-leading Serial ATA technology will make these products the most compelling PCI to SATA solutions on the market."

All of the devices feature Marvell's high-performance Serial ATA technology and are Serial ATA 1.0 compliant. Marvell's SATA PHY technology includes features such a hot pluggability, Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) for reduced Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) and programmable PHY settings for pre-emphasis and amplitude. Each product supports a 32-bit 33/66 MHz PCI bus and are provided with Promise's highly advanced drivers for both RAID and non-RAID applications.

Henry Kao, vice president of the product marketing division at GIGABYTE said, "GIGABYTE is committed to driving the rapid proliferation of Serial ATA not only into the desktop PC, but also into workstation, server and network attached storage applications. We are pleased to be working with Promise Technology to make this a reality. Their renowned ATA host controller and RAID 'know-how' is complemented by Marvell's unrivaled Serial ATA leadership, and makes for a powerful combination of companies, and of course a high-performance product as well."

"We are excited to aggressively lead the charge towards Serial ATA's widespread adoption in the PC and other computing platforms," commented Joseph Hsu, president of MSI. "Promise's fully integrated Serial ATA RAID controller is a critical element in our plan to rapidly bring Serial ATA to the masses. Promise's advanced host controller and ATA RAID expertise, combined with their use of Marvell's advanced Serial ATA technology, makes their SATA RAID controller the clear choice for our Serial ATA motherboards. PC OEM customers and end-users will benefit greatly from the lower overall manufacturing costs, increased PC cooling and higher throughput offered by Serial ATA."

Availability

Applicable to a variety of host-side applications, the Marvell and Promise PCI to Serial ATA devices are currently available in sample quantities and are slated for production quantities this summer.

About Promise Technology

Promise Technology is the recognized world leader in ATA controllers, ATA RAID cards and ATA RAID subsystems. The company maintains ongoing product development relationships with most major ATA hard drive manufacturers and OEMs. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif. , the company maintains offices in Europe, Taiwan and China. For more information, visit Promise Technology's website at www.promise.com.

About Marvell

Marvell, a technology leader in the development of extreme broadband system-level IC solutions for Internet connectivity and infrastructure, comprises Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and its subsidiaries, including Marvell Semiconductor, Marvell Asia Pte, Marvell Japan K.K , Marvell Taiwan, Marvell International and Galileo Technology.

On behalf of MIL, MSI designs, develops and markets integrated circuits utilizing proprietary Communications Mixed-Signal Processing (CMSP) and digital signal processing technologies for communications signal processing markets.

MAPL is headquartered in Singapore and is responsible for production, distribution and design operations. GTL develops high-performance communications Internetworking and Switching products for the broadband communications market. As used in this release, the terms "Company" and "Marvell" refer to the entire group of companies. The Company applies its technology to the extreme broadband communications market where its products are used in network access equipment to provide the interface between communications systems and data transmission media. MSI is headquartered at 700 First Ave., Sunnyvale, Calif., 94089; 408-222-2500. More information on Marvell is available on the Internet at www.marvell.com.