Microsemi Expands Market Opportunities for Cloud Data Centers with Announcement of Adaptec Smart Storage Compatibility with AMD EPYC Processor

Microsemi Complements AMD EPYC Server Solutions with Low Power, High Performance HBA and RAID Offerings for Storage Connectivity

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., March 20, 2018 - Microsemi Corporation (Nasdaq: MSCC), a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced interoperability between its 12 gigabits per second (Gbps) SAS/SATA host bus adapters (HBAs) and redundant array of independent disk (RAID) adapters, including the Microsemi Adaptec HBA 1100, SmartHBA 2100 and SmartRAID 3100, part of its Smart Storage adapters portfolio, and AMD's (Nasdaq: AMD) EPYC™ processor series. Data center customers looking for a storage adapter solution for EPYC processor deployments can now utilize Microsemi's full suite of Smart Storage solutions with confidence as a fully compatible end-to-end solution.

"As AMD-based processors are increasingly being considered for next-generation server deployments in cloud data centers, extensive interoperability testing between our companies has shown our feature-rich high performance Smart Storage adapters to be a powerful storage solution when paired with AMD's EPYC processors," said Pete Hazen, vice president and general manager of storage solutions at Microsemi. "We are pleased to work closely with a well-respected industry leader, as this collaboration provides data center customers with the confidence to make Microsemi their first call when looking to adopt AMD's unique EPYC processors."

Market research firm IDC recently reported the worldwide server market grew nearly 20 percent in the third quarter of 2017, reaching $17 billion and trending even higher than the same research firm's long-term forecast of 4 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2015-2020. The Microsemi Smart Storage platform, which leverages the company's unified Smart Storage Stack, is optimized for a variety of server storage applications for data centers, server original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and server original design manufacturers (ODMs) due to its high performance and flexibility.

"The server processor market is experiencing tremendous change as workloads and applications continue to evolve, consuming more memory bandwidth and I/O than ever before," said Raghu Nambiar, CVP and CTO of Datacenter Ecosystems and Application Engineering, AMD. "This is where the AMD EPYC processor stands apart, delivering leading performance and scale for cloud and enterprise customers. Now these customers can benefit from Microsemi's feature-rich Adaptec Smart Storage technologies combined with the AMD EPYC processor to help them achieve new levels of total cost of ownership savings in the data center."

AMD collaborates with Microsemi as part of Microsemi's Accelerate Ecosystem, which facilitates collaboration between Microsemi and leading firms in the semiconductor integrated circuit (IC), intellectual property (IP), systems, software, tools and design spaces to integrate, test and deliver pre-validated designs and system-level solutions for end customers in Microsemi's key vertical markets—aerospace and defense, data center, communications and industrial. The Accelerate Ecosystem is designed to reduce time-to-market for end customers and time-to-revenue for Microsemi and ecosystem members via technology alignment, joint marketing and sales acceleration. Learn more at https://www.microsemi.com/product-directory/partners/4325-accelerate-ecosystem-partners.

The Microsemi Adaptec HBA 1100, as well as the company's SmartHBA 2100 and SmartRAID 3100, leverage the unified Smart Storage Stack. The combination of its Unified Smart Storage Stack, SmartRAID and SmartHBA, HBA product families and Microsemi's SXP family of SAS expanders provide a complete server solution for storage management and connectivity. Each family has unique differentiating features.

The HBA 1100 is optimized for SDS, cold storage and raw high-performance connectivity. It also includes:

  • Adapters with up to 24 ports using 28nm SAS/SATA-optimized silicon, offering an optimal power profile for the target applications
  • Support for host-managed and host-aware SMR drives
  • Broad OS driver support, including inbox driver support
  • Performance of up to 1.7 million input/output operations per second (IOPS)

The SmartHBA 2100 is optimized for SDS applications which desire hardware RAID for OS boot drives as well as entry level RAID for SMBs. It also provides:

  • Basic RAID without compromising on the requirement for a fully featured and functional HBA, which is required for multi-path IO and SDS applications
  • Mixed mode enables drives to be independently configured as raw drives or as part of a logical volume
  • True hardware RAID for RAID 0,1,10 and RAID 5
  • Industry's only basic RAID solution with more than eight ports

The SmartRAID 3100 is optimized for enterprise storage applications which require the highest level of data availability and data center applications which benefit from caching. It also features:

  • Adapters with up to 24 ports using 28nm SAS/SATA-optimized silicon, offering an optimal power profile for the target applications
  • Zero Maintenance Cache Protection (ZMCP) with a cache size of up to 4GB and integrated cache backup circuitry for optimal cost, thermal performance and operating efficiency
  • Board options without cache backup
  • maxCache 4.0 included on all adapters with up to ~2TB SSD cache
  • Roadmap to maxCrypto controller-based encryption

Product Availability

Microsemi's HBA 1100 series board-level product family is available in volume production quantities now. For more information, visit www.microsemi.com/smartstorage or contact sales.support@microsemi.com.

Collaboration Demonstrations in Booth B40 at OCP Summit 2018 March 20-21

Microsemi and AMD will be showcasing their collaboration at the 2018 Open Compute Project (OCP) U.S. Summit in booth B40 during exposition hours on Tuesday, March 20 and Wednesday, March 21.

About Microsemi's Product Portfolio for Hyperscale Data Center

Microsemi is a premier supplier of innovative semiconductor, board, system, software and services for enterprise and hyperscale data centers, enabling high performance, secure, low power and reliable infrastructure for scalable deployments. Microsemi technologies drive innovation in applications including storage systems, server storage, NVM solutions, Ethernet switching, rack scale architecture, data center interconnect, network timing and power subsystems. Building on a track record of technology leadership, Microsemi's data center infrastructure portfolio is transforming networks that connect, store and move big data, while lowering the total cost of ownership of deploying next generation services.

The portfolio includes high performance NVMe storage controllers, NVRAM drives, SAS/SATA host bus adapters and RAID controllers enabling high capacity storage architectures, high density PCIe switching and firmware for rack scale architectures, PCIe re-drivers, and Ethernet PHYs for intra-rack connectivity. Microsemi's product portfolio also includes clock and power management, IEEE1588 integrated circuits (ICs) and NTP servers for synchronization across the data center, as well as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and system-on-chip (SoC) FPGAs to perform secure system management of servers and storage. For more information, visit http://www.microsemi.com/applications/data-center.

About Microsemi

Microsemi Corporation (NASDAQ: MSCC) offers a comprehensive portfolio of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. Products include high-performance and radiation-hardened analog mixed-signal integrated circuits, FPGAs, SoCs and ASICs; power management products; timing and synchronization devices and precise time solutions, setting the world's standard for time; voice processing devices; RF solutions; discrete components; enterprise storage and communication solutions, security technologies and scalable anti-tamper products; Ethernet solutions; Power-over-Ethernet ICs and midspans; as well as custom design capabilities and services. Microsemi is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, and has approximately 4,800 employees globally. Learn more at www.microsemi.com.

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