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ALACRITECH SIGNIFICANTLY EXPANDS INDUSTRY’S LEADING TCP ACCELERATOR LINE, ADDS EIGHT NEW HIGH PERFORMANCE TNICS FOR DATA INTENSIVE ENVIRONMENTS

New Multi-port SEN2000 Line with PCI-X and PCI Express Support Enables Enterprise Class Scalability and Availability for Networked Applications

San Jose, Calif. — April 4, 2005 — Alacritech® Inc., the innovator of data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems, today announced its new Alacritech SEN2000 Accelerator line of multi-port, Gigabit Ethernet TCP/IP Offload Engine Network Interface Cards (TNICs). The TNICs support the latest bus standards, including PCI-X and PCI Express, and have been independently tested and proven to enable dual-processor servers to deliver quad-processor file server performance simply by adding Alacritech Accelerators. All eight TNICs are based on the company’s fourth-generation programmable STA2000 Internet Protocol Processor (IPP) ASIC, the industry’s first wire-speed, hardware-based dual-port TCP/IP offload engine (TOE). Alacritech Accelerators are the only cards that can offload and accelerate both networking and storage traffic simultaneously, and are the only TNICs that enable failover capabilities. With unequaled performance and functionality, the Alacritech SEN2000 Accelerator line provides Windows-based networked applications with enterprise class scalability, availability and the highest performance possible in data intensive environments.

“Alacritech SEN2000 Accelerators provide customers with our fourth generation of TCP offload technology, solving server demands for higher connectivity and scalable networking performance,” said Joe Gervais, director, Marketing, Alacritech Inc.“ As bandwidth speeds and larger data sizes continue to outpace processors, Alacritech’s newest Accelerators with SLIC Technology transparently accelerate network data delivery. This month, we mark five years of shipping TOE technology proven to extend the performance and scalability of today’s Windows-based servers.”

Alacritech’s patented SLIC Technology is specifically designed to optimize the TCP/IP stack to efficiently address high volume data growth and increasing bandwidth rates without requiring any modification to applications. SLIC Technology significantly improves application response times with efficient protocol processing. By freeing the CPU, systems can focus on faster and more efficient data delivery to and from applications than is possible with server platforms today. TNICs based on SLIC Technology are deployed in tens of thousands of systems worldwide including NAS applications, video/imaging clients and media servers, and enterprise class servers.

“With over ten million transactions a month, we needed to ensure maximum application performance, speedy transaction processing, and rapid response times for customers,” said Andrew Yashchuk, director, Development, Nebo Systems, Inc.“After installing the new dual-port Alacritech SEN2002 Accelerators, our transaction speed has improved by 100%, our file copying is 20-fold faster, and we’ve significantly reduced the backup times of our stored image files. The Alacritech Accelerators enable us to cost-effectively increase the capacity of our existing servers, while maximizing our system performance and availability—the result is our customers gain a much better user experience and are highly productive.

Proven, Unsurpassed Performance in Data Intensive Environments

Alacritech commissioned VeriTest, the testing division of Lionbridge (Nasdaq: LIOX), to test its new dual-port SEN2002 in comparison to standard NIC products. VeriTest’s comprehensive testing confirmed the Alacritech Accelerators deliver quad-processor file server performance with a TNIC- equipped dual-processor system.The full report is available at: http://www.veritest.com/clients/reports/alacritech.

“Dealing with I/O processing issues as demand for data and bandwidth consume resources is a challenging problem as we move toward 10 Gigabit Ethernet,” said Randy Kerns, senior partner, Evaluator Group.“Alacritech set out many years ago to solve this problem and today its Data Path Offload architecture provides advantages in offloading the data handling for current and next generation servers. This will allow for continued benefits with scaling requirements in the future.”

New Alacritech SEN2000 Accelerator Line

The Alacritech SEN2000 Accelerator product line is the industry’s most comprehensive family of TNICs, and joins the Alacritech 1000x1 Accelerator as the only TNICs for Windows-based systems. The Alacritech SEN2000 Accelerator product line consists of eight models that range between one and four ports and are available in copper or fiber versions, with support for PCI-X or PCI Express bus standards. The eight new TNICs include:

Copper Model Fiber Model Ports Bus
SEN2001XT SEN2001XF 1 PCI-X
SEN2002XT SEN2002XF 2 PCI-X
SEN2102ET SEN2102EF 2 PCI Express
SEN2104ET SEN2104EF 4 PCI Express

Unique Features and Benefits

  • Accelerated data delivery with an ASIC-based TOE
  • Seamless integration with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator
  • Only TNICs to offer hardware acceleration for the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator
  • Industry standard Ethernet link aggregation and failover either within, or across, cards
  • Highest performance and only TNICs available for Windows – wire-speed performance with standard 1500 byte Ethernet frames or 9000 byte jumbo frames
  • First and only dual-port, quad-port TNICs with support for PCI-X and PCI Express
  • Support for PXE and iSCSI boot

About Alacritech SLIC Technology®
Alacritech’s SLIC Technology is a Data Path Offload (DPO) architecture that is the first fully compatible and scalable architecture to offload network protocol processing including TCP/IP, RDMA and iSCSI from host software to silicon. By efficiently eliminating system and network bottlenecks and maximizing data movement through Ethernet-based networks, SLIC Technology significantly increases system, application and network performance and enables scalable networking to 10 Gigabit and beyond. All Alacritech Accelerator products are based on SLIC Technology and include Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet TNIC products, iSCSI controller products and IPP ASICs. All Alacritech products offer industry-standard failover and link aggregation.

Availability
The Alacritech SEN2000 family of TNICs support Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 and are now available in PCI-X models with either copper or fiber interfaces through Alacritech’s channel partners. The SEN2001XT with a 10/100/1000 twisted pair interface has a U.S. suggested list price of $999 and the SEN2002XT with two 10/100/1000 twisted pair interfaces has a U.S. suggested list price of $1,449. The PCI Express dual- and quad-port models will be available through channel partners in 90 days. Production evaluation units of the PCI-X models are immediately available through the Alacritech Product Evaluation Program at Alacritech’s e-store. For more information, please visit http://www.alacritech.com.

About Alacritech, Inc.
Alacritech, Inc. is the world’s leading supplier of standards-based scalable networking technology and solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems. As the first to envision a dynamic network protocol processing architecture that enables systems to scale to address ever increasing data and network speeds, Alacritech developed and patented the SLIC Technology® architecture. Alacritech’s complete line of Accelerators, based on this architecture, optimize data delivery in servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. SLIC Technology, the basis of industry-accepted TOE solutions, ships in storage and server products worldwide. Alacritech is a privately held company based in San Jose, California. For more information about Alacritech and its products, please visit the company’s Web site at www.alacritech.com.

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Alacritech, the Alacritech logo, SLIC Technology, SLIC Technology logo, Accelerating Data Delivery and Dynamic TCP Offload are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Alacritech, Inc. in the United States. Other marks belong to their respective owners.


Press Contacts:

Keith Parker
Alacritech, Inc.
Tel: 408.487.5781
kparker@alacritech.com
  Cristina Gutierrez
Blanc and Otus
Tel: 415.856.5159
cgutierrez@blancandotus.com