Performance Technologies and SUNY Buffalo Partner on a Fault Tolerant Supercomputer

Business Wire, March 29, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 29, 2000

Center for Computational Research Uses PTI's Fault Tolerant

Capabilities For Its Sun Workstation Cluster

Performance Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: PTIX) today announced it has provided three of its Nebula 8000 Fault Tolerant Ethernet Switching Systems to the Center for Computational Research at SUNY Buffalo. The PTI equipment is designed to support continuous operation of the University's cluster of 64 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Ultra(TM) 5 workstations, thereby elevating this collection of workstations to fault tolerant "supercomputer" status.

"We greatly appreciate the generosity extended to us by Performance Technologies," said Dr. Russ Miller, CCR director and professor of computer science at SUNY Buffalo. "The Nebula 8000 Fault Tolerant Ethernet Switches offer higher performance and greater reliability in our application. Additionally, our relationship with Rochester-based PTI serves to strengthen our collective interest in promoting "Made in New York" products."

Said Donald Turrell, president and CEO of Performance Technologies, "The supercomputer application developed by SUNY's Center for Computational Research plays a valuable role in contributing to the overall curriculum at the University. As a technology driven company, we are keenly aware of the importance these systems play in preparing today's students for tomorrow's workplace. We appreciate the opportunity to work with the faculty at CCR in this valuable endeavor."

The supercomputing network at SUNY Buffalo is the end result of a research collaboration launched in June 1999 between the University and Sun Microsystems to develop a network of high performance workstations that will deliver the power of a supercomputer at a reduced cost. The system configuration consists of 64 Sun Ultra 5 333MHz workstations running Beowulf/Linux, a software operating system designed to meld the workstations into a single resource. From a performance standpoint, this type of integration approaches the acknowledged power of today's general-purpose supercomputers, but at a fraction of the cost of the bigger machines.

"Since its inception, Sun has been a strong supporter of the open source community, and this is one example of the kind of collaboration Sun has with the academic community," said Kim Jones, vice president, global education and research, Sun Microsystems. "We're excited about what the project means in terms of advancing the science of computation for both students and researchers."

Working with Sun Microsystems on this project is a continuation of a long-standing relationship Performance Technologies has enjoyed with this leader in networked technology. As a recognized OEM supplier to Sun, PTI continues to provide a variety of high-speed synch/serial Wide Area Networking adapters and protocol software solutions for Sun's high performance platforms.

Performance Technologies' Nebula 8000 is the industry's first truly fault tolerant Fast Ethernet enterprise switch for building highly resilient networks. Where fault tolerance was once seen only in high-end backbone networks - out of the reach of most LANs - the 32 port Nebula 8000 enables organizations who depend on network reliability to gain all the benefits and safeguards of fault tolerance at a cost far lower than building and running redundant systems.

About Performance Technologies, Inc.

Performance Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Rochester, New York, designs, manufactures and markets a wide variety of high performance telecommunications solutions. PTI is recognized by major OEMs and system integrators in the telecommunications industry as a leading source of high performance, IP telephony networking solutions for a wide variety of applications.

The Company targets opportunities in the exploding Internet-driven telecommunications marketplace, supported by its PTI Canadian subsidiary, MicroLegend Telecom Systems, an innovator and developer of advanced Signaling System 7 (SS7) telecommunications gateway products.

MicroLegend is the leading global internetworking provider of SS7 signaling gateways for major telecommunications carriers and "next-generation" service providers. PTI is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: PTIX). Visit PTI's Web site at www.pt.com. For additional information on PTI Canada, please visit MicroLegend's Web site at www.microlegend.com.

The State University of New York at Buffalo

The University at Buffalo is New York's premier public center for graduate and professional education and the state's largest and most comprehensive public university. As the only public member in New York and New England of the prestigious Association of American Universities, the University at Buffalo stands in the first rank among the nation's research-intensive public universities. The university was a private institution from 1846 until 1962; during that time, 11 of its 12 professional schools were founded. After merging with the State University of New York in 1962, the already mature University at Buffalo was a direct beneficiary of New York's aggressive investment in public higher education and grew in size and ambition at a remarkable pace. This private-public heritage has endowed the University at Buffalo with a special character. The professional schools at the University at Buffalo share an unusually research-intensive orientation with their counter-part faculties in the arts and sciences, and together have established an outstanding record of research, scholarship, and creative activity.