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LSI LOGIC TEAMS WITH SEAGATE TO DRIVE SAS INTEROPERABILITY

Industry leaders LSI Logic and Seagate Technology have concluded early testing and validation of Serial Attached SCSI interoperability, further advancing the infrastructure which will support migration to the new interface. Using the Fusion-MPT architecture to simplify and speed development, the effort moves product development closer to marketplace reality as the two industry leaders collaborate to bring customers a market-first Serial Attached SCSI solution.

"This development milestone takes us a step further along the path to silicon deployment," said Bill Wuertz, vice president and general manager for the LSI Logic Storage Standard Products division. "Our market-leading position with Ultra320 SCSI provides us with a significant advantage as we leverage our engineering experience into SAS silicon. We're excited to demonstrate the industry's first true implementation of Serial Attached SCSI."

Using Seagate hard disk drives, LSI Logic becomes the first SCSI vendor to validate Serial Attached SCSI interoperability. Lab testing validated full protocol transfers (write, read, compares) between the LSI Logic controller and Seagate's SAS drive at 1.5 Gb/s speeds. This is the first validation of interoperability between two fully compliant SAS devices as well as the first step toward the move to 3 Gb/s speeds planned for production SAS devices.

"Serial Attached SCSI will provide a growth path to greater addressability, lower cost scalability and high throughput performance required by future servers, workstations and storage systems," said Brian Dexheimer, Seagate executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. "Seagate is working closely with LSI Logic and the rest of the industry in developing the SAS interface specification into a complementary enterprise storage interface for OEM customers and IT professional users."

"The dedication of diverse hard disk drive and infrastructure vendors to Serial Attached SCSI is impressive, and the initial acceptance of this new interface by the major OEM accounts seems promising," said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. "The extent of the penetration of SAS and its strategic influence in legacy and emerging enterprise markets will largely depend on timely execution and the continuing commitment of key OEMs."

Single Interface Offers Choice Of HDD Solutions

The SCSI Trade Association (www.scsita.org/) has announced a SCSI product roadmap that will extend the industry's most successful interface technology to a new generation of serial devices. SAS controllers and expanders will provide both Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drive plug compatibility and operate at 1.5 and 3Gb/s data transfer rates. Serial Attached SCSI products are expected to demonstrate later this year with availability in 2004.

The SAS standard defines a device-level enterprise storage interface incorporating SCSI command sets which provides backward compatibility, serial point-to-point interconnections, dual porting, increased addressability and the ability to scale to small form factors. Its physical layer is compatible with SATA, giving future users the choice of populating their systems with SCSI or SATA hard disk drives or a combination of both. Enterprise users will be able to confidently continue investing in SCSI technology that delivers a scalable feature set and robust reliability.

About LSI Logic Corporation

LSI Logic Corporation is a leading designer and manufacturer of communications, consumer and storage semiconductors for applications that access, interconnect and store data, voice and video. In addition, the company supplies storage network solutions for the enterprise. LSI Logic is headquartered at 1621 Barber Lane, Milpitas, CA 95035. www.lsilogic.com/.