Vitesse and Promise Technology Unveil RAIDScale™, the Premier Enterprise Solution for SAS RAID-On-Motherboard

Storage Networking World Fall 2006
ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation (Pink Sheets:VTSS), a leading provider of enterprise-class storage IC solutions, and Promise Technology, the originator of SATA/ATA RAID solutions and a dominant storage product supplier, today announced RAIDScale™, the industry’s first affordable, high-performance solution for SAS RAID-on-Motherboard (ROMB) designs.

RAIDScale combines Vitesse’s RAID-on-Chip (ROC) products, either the VSC7250, PCI-Express 8-port ROC controller or the VSC7251, PCI-Express 4-port ROC controller, with enterprise-hardened RAID software from Promise Technology. It delivers cutting-edge performance and robust data protection while providing industry-leading RAID-on-Demand functionality. RAIDScale is the industry’s most compelling PCI Express SAS RAID solution available today.

Feature Richness with Performance

4 or 8 Lane PCI Express Connectivity
4 or 8 PHY SAS 1.1 Connectivity (1.5 or 3 Gbps)
Embedded MIPS™ Processing Engine
High-performance, Integrated XOR Hardware Accelerator
Greater than 1 Gbps RAID-5 Read Performance
Greater than 500 Mbps RAID-5 Write Performance
Support for RAID Volume Groups up to 512 Terabytes
Web-based Configuration and Management
“Vitesse is committed to driving both SAS technology adoption and its advancement by providing cost-effective, high-performance RAID solutions for our OEM and ODM customers,”said David Allen, director of marketing, Storage Products Division at Vitesse. “RAIDScale effectively marries two of the industry’s top product offerings for RAID-on-Motherboard (ROMB) and delivers enterprise features and performance at an attractive price.”

“Design simplicity and flexibility was key in the development of the product. Those concepts are what sets the RAIDScale solution apart from any other offering today,” said Sam Sirisena, senior vice president, Sales and Marketing at Promise Technology.

RAIDScale supports the basic RAID-0/1 or scale-up RAID-5 with additional DDR II support. This arrangement not only provides the most cost-effective solutions for RAID-0/1, but also provides in-position upgradeability for RAID-5 applications.

Pricing and Availability

The VSC7250 and VSC7251 SAS ROMB reference design and associated evaluation vehicles are currently available to OEM and ODM customers through the Vitesse sales network. Complete solution pricing is available upon request.

About the Vitesse Storage Products Division

For over two decades, the Storage Products Division at Vitesse has delivered state-of-the-art IC solutions for enterprise storage and storage networking applications. With emphasis on the development of advanced disk array intelligence, high-performance interconnect and enclosure management devices for Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA), the Vitesse portfolio is the most robust market offering for enterprise applications. As the world leader in enterprise storage ICs, Vitesse components are used in a wide array of products from industry-leading OEMs, including: Brocade, Dell Computer, EMC, Emulex, Engenio, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Ltd., IBM, Intel, NEC, Sun Microsystems, and others.

About Vitesse

Vitesse designs, develops and markets a diverse portfolio of high-performance, cost-competitive semiconductor solutions for communications and storage networks worldwide. Engineering excellence and dedicated customer service distinguish Vitesse as an industry leader in Gigabit Ethernet LAN, Ethernet-over-SONET, Fibre Channel, Serial Attached SCSI, Optical Transport, and other applications. Vitesse innovation empowers customers to deliver superior products for Enterprise, Access, Metro, and Core applications. Additional company and product information is available at www.vitesse.com.

About Promise Technology, Inc.

Promise Technology is the originator of SATA/ATA RAID and a dominant storage product supplier with a comprehensive storage product line offering. Using Serial ATA (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology, Promise designs, manufactures and delivers high-performance, reliable, cost-effective, fault tolerant RAID storage solutions for SMB/enterprise IT users, VARs, resellers, SIs and OEMs. Headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., the company is ISO-9001:2000 and ISO-14001:2004 certified. Additional company and product information is available at http://www.promise.com.