Maxtor SAS Hard Drive Achieves 3Gb/s Data Transfer Milestone With Dual Port Operation

(Auszug aus der Pressemitteilung)

MILPITAS, Calif., Feb. 11 – Maxtor Corporation

(NYSE: MXO) announced today verification of full-speed, 3Gb/s, operation
between an LSI Logic Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller and an
in-form-factor prototype Maxtor SAS disk drive with dual active ports. Using
the LSI Logic SAS1064 controller IC, Maxtor completed simultaneous read and
write operations on both ports and verified 3Gb/s SAS I/O transfers in
accordance with the SAS protocol and standards. To achieve this significant
milestone, Maxtor integrated several key technologies, enabling queued read,
write and compare commands across the SAS interface, and reading and writing
data to and from the media.

SAS extends the capabilities of today’s parallel SCSI disk drives by
adding a second port to the drive. Dual ports provide two separate data paths
down to the drive to allow for higher levels of performance and eliminate any
single point of failure, enabling the design of highly-available enterprise
storage systems.

“Maxtor continues to set a leadership pace in the development of Serial
Attached SCSI,” said Kevin Wittmer, director of technical marketing at Maxtor.
“Today’s announcement is significant because we have integrated several key
new technologies to demonstrate an in-form-factor, dual-port SAS disk drive,
interoperating with LSI Logic’s SAS controller. We are pleased to have reached
this milestone because it is a proof point of our work toward Maxtor’s ‘Serial
Storage in a Box(TM)’ initiative.”

Because the SAS physical layer is compatible with SATA, users will have
the choice of populating their systems with SAS hard drives, SATA hard drives
or a combination of both. IT managers can use SATA drives for applications
requiring the maximum capacity at the best cost, and SAS drives for
performance-oriented applications that require high transaction rates. This
provides high-availability, flexibility and scalability in one enclosure that
can serve as a universal building block for constructing a data center’s
storage infrastructure. The system, which Maxtor refers to as ‘Serial Storage
in a Box,’ maximizes a customer’s investment.

“SAS products are a reality. LSI Logic has delivered the industry’s first
single-chip SAS silicon, the LSISAS1064 controller,
and announced plans for a family of controllers, expanders, host bus adapters,
and RAID storage adapters,” said David Steele, director of product planning
and management for LSI Logic storage standard products division. “By working
closely with disk drive leaders such as Maxtor, we’re confident SAS products
can be delivered with outstanding reliability and performance.”

Demonstrations of LSI Logic and Maxtor SAS products will take place at the
Intel Developers Forum, February 17-19 at the Moscone Convention Center in San
Francisco in LSI Logic’s booth #716.

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