Fujitsu Computer Products of America

PMC-Sierra Announces Serial ATA (SATA) System Interoperability

PMC-Sierra's QuadSMX 3G Device Achieves Interoperability with SATA Controllers and Disk Drives, Supporting the Adoption of SATA into Enterprise Storage Systems.

Santa Clara, CA, May 04, 2004 — PMC-Sierra (NASDAQ: PMCS) demonstrated system interoperability with industry standard SATA Hard Disk Drive (HDD) vendors including, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital to SATA host controllers including 3ware, Adaptec, and Promise Technology at the SATA Plugfest. This milestone assures OEMs of an interoperable solution for next-generation bulk storage systems based on low-cost SATA HDDs.

The PM8380 QuadSMX™ 3G device provides physical layer system interconnect and link redundancy between industry standard SATA HDDs and host controllers. Error-free data transfer operations were validated up to 3.0 Gb/s between the QuadSMX™ 3G and SATA system components.

"PMC-Sierra is working closely with the industry to deploy gigabit serial interconnect technology and the SATA protocol standard into the enterprise storage market," said Mark Stibitz, vice president and general manager of PMC-Sierra's Enterprise Storage Division. "The QuadSMX 3G is part of our growing family of industry-proven standard products that provide low-cost, high-performance solutions to storage OEMs."

"Fujitsu, PMC-Sierra and all Industry leaders must work together to ensure Serial ATA's success and rapid enterprise adoption," said Chuck Nielsen, chief technologist, Fujitsu Computer Products of America.  "The proven interoperability between Fujitsu's 2.5" Serial ATA hard disk drive and PMC-Sierra's QuadSMX 3G is a critical step in delivering advanced storage products to the market."

"Interoperability testing and other collaborations will significantly accelerate the growth of SATA for use with nearline storage and similar applications," said Jose Antelo, general manager, 3.5-inch Consumer and Commercial HDDs, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "Hitachi has played an integral role in helping to develop and promote the SATA interface and we were pleased to be demonstrating Deskstar interoperability at the event."

"Seagate is pleased to demonstrate the interoperability of our native Serial ATA hard drives with PMC-Sierra's QuadSMX 3G," said Marc Noblitt, manager of I/O Planning at Seagate Technology. "We continue to work hard to organize this plugfest to ensure interoperability with industry partners and accelerate the deployment of SATA into a variety of applications."

"Interoperability is vital to driving the widespread deployment of new technologies," said Paul Griffith, manager of strategic marketing, at Adaptec. "Adaptec is pleased to demonstrate the interoperability of our Serial ATA RAID controllers with PMC-Sierra products."

"Promise is committed to the expanding deployment of Serial ATA technologies and interoperability to help advance this vision," said Chi-Chen Wu, chief technology officer, at Promise Technology. "Promise works closely with industry leaders such as PMC-Sierra to ensure easy adoption of new technologies."

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About the Serial ATA / Serial ATA II Plugfest

The Serial ATA / Serial ATA II Plugfest brings companies who are working on Serial ATA together in one place at one time in order to make it easy for them to quickly assess the health of their product through interoperability testing. As SATA products are deployed into the market, it is critical that industry suppliers work together to ensure proper operation and interoperability. The Plugfest is open to all companies working on Serial ATA and Serial ATA II compatible products – including motherboards, host bus adapters, HDDs, optical drives (ATAPI), cables, semiconductor devices, storage enclosures, OS, BIOS and test tools.
For more information, please see: http://www.serialata.org

About Serial ATA

Serial ATA is an evolutionary replacement for the Parallel ATA physical storage interface. Serial ATA provides significant cost and performance benefits such as 1.5Gbps and 3Gbps operation, scalability, hot plug capable, fail over routing, simpler cabling and longer cable lengths.
For more information, please see: http://www.serialata.org

About PMC-Sierra's Storage Products

PMC-Sierra offers cost-optimized products featuring best-in-class signal integrity, flexibility and diagnostics for increased system performance and management.  The company provides 1G, 2G and 4G Fibre Channel disk array and system interconnect products for SAN/NAS storage and switch fabric applications.  PMC-Sierra has also announced a 3G interconnect product for SAS and SATA storage systems.  
For more information, please see: http://www.pmc-sierra.com/storage

About PMC-Sierra

PMC-Sierra™ is a leading provider of high speed broadband communications and storage semiconductors and MIPS-basedÔ processors for Enterprise, Access, Metro Optical Transport, Storage Area Networking and Wireless network equipment.  The company offers worldwide technical and sales support, including a network of offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia.  The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the PMCS symbol and is included in the S&P 500 Index.  
For more information, please see: http://www.pmc-sierra.com

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