Emulex Announces New Fibre Channel Host Adapter Family Featuring 2Gb/s Data Rate And 66MHz PCI - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Dec 13, 1999

Emulex Corp., a leader in fibre channel technology and products, Wednesday announced the availability of three new 64-bit, 66MHz LightPulse PCI host bus adapters, the 2Gb/s LP9002, and the 1Gb/s LP9000 and LP950.

All products feature the new 2Gb/s capable Centaur ASIC, Emulex's latest fibre channel controller ASIC, and are fully compatible with drivers and software used with previous generations of products. In addition, the LP9002 provides automatic speed sensing and automatic speed matching, enabling the LP9002 to provide 2Gb/s performance while maintaining backwards compatibility with 1Gb/s fibre channel installations.

The LP9002 and LP9000 provide high-performance connectivity for high-end, mission critical systems, while the LP950 provides high-performance fibre channel connectivity for entry-level Windows NT/2000 and Novell systems.

"These new products enable our storage and server customers to maintain performance leadership while maintaining backwards compatibility with established hardware and software infrastructures," stated Mike Smith, vice president of marketing for Emulex. "By providing the 2Gb/s LP9002 host adapter, customers can ship '2Gb/s ready' systems that run at 1Gb/s today and will scale seamlessly as other 2Gb/s SAN components become available," he added.

LP9000 and LP950 Host Adapter Families The 1Gb/s LP9000 and 2Gb/s LP9002 are designed to support mission-critical enterprise applications. The LP9002 provides 2Gb/s fibre channel connectivity that provides speed matching capability to provide complete compatibility with existing 1Gb/s fibre channel SANs, while the LP9000 supports a 1Gb/s data rate.

These 64-bit, 66MHz PCI host adapters provide a unique combination of features, including switched fabric support using F_Port and FL_Port connections, full-duplex data transfers, high data integrity features, support for all fibre channel topologies and support for service classes 2 and 3.

The LP9000 and LP9002 also feature sophisticated hardware that provides superior performance in storage area networks, delivering low latency and high throughput in switched, arbitrated loop and clustered environments.

The adapters are available with a range of physical interface options, including copper, short wave optics, and long-wave optics GBICs, as well as embedded copper and embedded optics interfaces.

The LP9000 and LP9002 are supported by full-featured software for Windows NT/2000, Novell, Solaris, AIX and Unixware environments, including support for storage protocol (SCSI), network protocol (IP), as well as multi-protocol (SCSI & IP) operation, enabling advanced enterprise SAN applications.

Based on the LP9000 architecture, the LP950 provides a full feature set and high-performance for open server environments, including Windows NT/2000 and Novell. Like the LP9000, the LP950 supports storage protocol, network protocol and multi-protocol operation. The LP950 is available with copper and short-wave optical GBICs as well as embedded copper and optic interfaces.

The LP9000, LP9002 and LP950 are available in sample quantities now to qualified OEMs, and will be available in production quantities in Q1 2000. These products are part of a broad family of fibre channel products offered by Emulex to address the needs of both mission-critical enterprise applications and open systems computing.

The Emulex fibre channel family also includes the company's high-performance PCI-based LP8000 and LP7000E host adapters, the recently introduced S-Bus based LP8000S host adapter, the price-performance optimized LP3000 host adapter and the industry's first digital re-timing hub, the LH5000 series.

Emulex Corp. is a leading designer of high-performance network connectivity products including fibre channel host bus adapters and hubs, printer servers and network access products. The company's hardware and software-based networking solutions improve communication in computer networks and enhance data flow between computers and peripherals.

Fibre channel is a high-performance ANSI standard interface that is supported by the 120 worldwide member Fibre Channel Association which includes Sun, Hewlett-Packard and Seagate. As a leading developer and supplier of fibre channel technology, Emulex's fibre channel devices support all implementations of the fibre channel standard, including arbitrated loop, switched fabric and point-to-point topologies.

The company markets to OEMs and end users through its own worldwide selling organization, as well as two-tier distribution partners. Corporate headquarters are located in Costa Mesa. News releases and other information about Emulex Corp. are available via Emulex's World Wide Web address at http://www.emulex.com.