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 the availability of its new SES2000 line of iSCSI controllers based on SLIC Technology®, the company’s patented Data Path Offload (DPO) architecture. The SES2000 line includes the industry’s first multi-port and PCI Express iSCSI controllers. These products have been independently tested and proven to enable more than twice the single-port transaction rate of existing ASIC-based iSCSI HBAs — providing over 54,000 transactions per second more than the next closest competitor. The new SES2000 family joins the award-winning Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerators as the only iSCSI cards to offer native hardware acceleration for the Microsoft® iSCSI Software Initiator, failover support and systems management functionality. With significantly greater performance and throughput, and a lower price point than competing solutions, the Alacritech SES2000 family provides customers with the fastest and most efficient iSCSI interfaces for Windows-based servers available today.

“As the originator of dynamic TCP offload technology, Alacritech today solidifies its leadership position with the new SES2000 iSCSI Accelerator line that incorporates the critical functionality customers require for scalable IP-based storage networks,” said Joe Gervais, director, Marketing, Alacritech Inc. “Our multi-port SES2000 family supports the latest bus standards, iSCSI boot and the highest per port transaction rates. With a street price below $400 per port for our multi-port cards, we’re providing our customers with a cost-effective, proven IP SAN solution that ensures resiliency and long-term scalability.”

Industry’s Proven Top Performance iSCSI Accelerators

The Alacritech SES2000 iSCSI Accelerator product line consists of eight models that are available in copper or fiber versions, and range between one and four ports with support for either the PCI-X or PCIe bus. The entire family supports iSCSI boot to enable diskless systems to perform a SAN boot from an iSCSI target. All Alacritech Accelerators are based on the company’s proven SLIC Technology architecture to deliver unmatched iSCSI performance and efficiency. Alacritech commissioned VeriTest, the testing division of Lionbridge (Nasdaq: LIOX), to test its new iSCSI controllers along with shipping iSCSI HBA products. VeriTest’s comprehensive comparison testing confirmed the Alacritech Accelerators enable more than twice the per-port transaction rate of its nearest competitors in the study. The full report is available at: http://www.veritest.com/clients/reports/alacritech. Key findings include:

• Significantly higher performance than high performance, ASIC-based HBAs


• Over 54k higher transaction rate
• 149% – 637% greater average 512 Byte bi-directional transaction rate with a peak rate of 90,500 operations per second
• Average 512 Byte read transaction rate of 71,264 operations per second


• Higher throughput at the 4KB block size used by Microsoft Exchange
• 85%-508% greater average throughput for 4KB bi-directional transactions with a peak throughput of 188 MB/s
• 67%-319% greater average throughput for 4KB read transactions

“We regularly run bandwidth-intensive applications and transfer large medical imaging files,” said John Haltom, network director, Erlanger Health System. “We have deployed Alacritech TNICs in over 90 of our servers and gained an immediate return-on-investment by significantly speeding our file transfers, improving network throughput and maximizing the performance of our existing servers. As we roll out iSCSI over the coming months, we plan to deploy the new Alacritech SES2000 iSCSI Accelerators in up to 150 additional servers for end-to-end Alacritech storage network connectivity. As a result, our patients will be the ultimate beneficiaries of our extremely efficient networked system.”

“For businesses of all sizes, the move to network storage is not happening in isolation,” said Richard Villars, vice president, Storage Networking Infrastructure, IDC.“IT managers understand that ensuring reliable performance for both network and storage traffic will be an important requirement in the coming years. Products like those introduced by Alacritech will make it possible for companies to more effectively introduce iSCSI into their environments without disrupting existing operations.”

Broad Industry Compatibility

The Alacritech SES2000 iSCSI Accelerator line utilizes the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator, maintaining interoperability with a growing number of leading storage hardware vendors who have qualified their iSCSI storage subsystems for use with the Microsoft Windows® operating system under the Microsoft Designed for Windows Logo Program. Alacritech iSCSI Accelerators have achieved broad interoperability certification with leading IP storage solution providers including Cisco® Systems, FalconStor Software, Inc., HP, McDATA® Corp., Network Appliance™, Promise® Technology, Inc., SANRAD and String Bean Software, Inc.

New Alacritech SES2000 iSCSI Accelerator Line

The Alacritech SES2000 iSCSI Accelerator product line is the industry’s most comprehensive family of iSCSI controllers. Eight new models join the award-winning SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator:

Unique Benefits

• Seamless integration with the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator
• Only iSCSI controller to offer hardware acceleration for the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator
• Simultaneous network support including in-band IP Storage Management protocol support with HTTP, iSNS and SNMP
• Industry standard Ethernet link aggregation and failover either within, or across, cards
• Highest performance iSCSI controller on the market
• First and only dual-port, quad-port, and PCI Express iSCSI controllers on the market
• Lowest priced iSCSI controller on the market

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 SES2000 family of iSCSI Accelerators 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 SES2001XT with a 10/100/1000 twisted pair interface has a U.S. suggested list price of $599, and the SES2002XT with two 10/100/1000 twisted pair interfaces has a U.S. suggested list price of $879. The PCI Express dual- and quad-port models are sampling and will be available 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.