LSI 8 Gb/s SerDes Core to Enable Next Generation SANs


Fifth Generation GigaBlaze Transceiver Addresses Market Demand for Advanced Fibre Channel Connectivity

NEW YORK, May 17 / LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE:LSI) today announced it is demonstrating its GigaBlaze® 8.5 Gb/s serializer/deserializer (SerDes) transceiver core for OEM storage and SAN infrastructure applications. As the industry's leading family of SerDes cores, GigaBlaze has enabled multiple generations of Fibre Channel connectivity. LSI SerDes cores can be found in more than 37 million Fibre Channel ports supporting host bus adapters, switches and storage peripherals worldwide.

The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) has ratified the 8 Gb/s standard as the next step in its SAN Fabric roadmap. Products based on the 8 Gb/s standard are backward compatible and support auto-negotiation with 2 and 4 Gb/s products, providing full interoperability while protecting previous investments. Multiple market-leading OEMs are using the new LSI SerDes technology as a foundation for their 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel connectivity with the first products expected to enter the market in the 2007-2008 timeframe.

"For many organizations, Fibre Channel is a critical element within the core of their data center storage environment; one that they expect to maintain and upgrade for the foreseeable future," said Richard Villars, Vice President of Storage Systems research at IDC. "Continued development of next generation Fibre Channel components like the LSI 8 Gb/s SerDes will make it easier for companies to have confidence in their storage infrastructure as they accelerate and grow mission-critical and business-critical applications."

The new GigaBlaze 8 Gb/s SerDes core enables a significant data throughput increase for SAN backbones as well as providing high-performance servers with faster SAN links. Targeted at next generation storage and compute interconnects, the GigaBlaze 8 Gb/s SerDes core satisfies the requirements of bandwidth-intensive applications that demand swift transfer of large data blocks. Examples of these applications include remote data replication, streaming video, medical imaging, data mining and data warehousing.

"Leveraging our rich custom solution capability and extensive experience as a leader in storage silicon, LSI is developing SerDes core technologies that are optimized to enable the highest-performance Fibre Channel connectivity for storage and SAN infrastructure applications," said Robert Bielby, vice president of marketing, Custom Solutions Group, LSI Logic. "With our strong focus on developing and driving industry standards, we are leading the way in providing silicon, systems and software solutions that address the next generation requirements of our OEM storage and SAN infrastructure customers."

About LSI Logic

LSI Logic Corporation is a leading provider of silicon-to-system solutions that are used at the core of products that create, store and consume digital information. LSI offers a broad portfolio of capabilities including custom and standard product ICs, host bus and RAID adapters, storage area network solutions and software applications. LSI products enable leading technology companies in the Storage and Consumer markets to deliver some of the most advanced and well-known electronic systems in the market today. More information is available at www.lsi.com.

Source: LSI Logic Corporation

CONTACT: Dan Garza of LVA Communications, +1-408-364-0126, or
dan@lva.com, for LSI; or Laurie Brunner of LSI Logic Corporation,
+1-408-433-8415, or laurie.brunner@lsi.com

Web site: http://lsilogic.com/

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