TOE Technology Innovator Alacritech Marks Patent Milestone
Five Patents Solidify Alacritech's Position as TCP/IP Offload and Acceleration Leader
San Jose, Calif., — June 24, 2002 — Alacritech®, Inc., the innovator of network accelerator solutions that enable fast and efficient servers and storage systems, today announced that it has secured five patents in the area of TCP/IP offload and acceleration. Led by SCSI (small computer system interface) creator and storage visionary Larry Boucher, Alacritech is the pioneer of TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) technology. Alacritech develops SLIC (session layer interface card) Technology, a data-path offload and acceleration architecture, on which the company bases its highly acclaimed line of Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet accelerator products.
"Five years ago, we set out to accomplish something many in the industry said couldn't be done," said Larry Boucher, president and CEO, Alacritech, Inc. "Today, we mark a milestone in the area of server and network acceleration, and are pleased to be the only company offering a patented, proven methodology for offloading and accelerating TCP/IP in servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. We look forward to continued success with SLIC Technology® as Gigabit Ethernet overtakes Fast Ethernet and as we roll our 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology into blade servers and high-performance storage platforms over the coming year."
Alacritech developed its data-path TCP/IP offload and acceleration architecture to overcome the penalty of TCP processing. To deliver the most efficient, high-performance server and storage traffic acceleration possible, data movement is performed by a custom ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) called Internet Protocol Processor (IPP) on the adapter, and TCP/IP connection management and error handling are handled by host software. Unlike processor-based and network processor-based TCP offload architectures, Alacritech's IPP is the first state machine-based hardware built specifically for TCP offload. Alacritech's data-path offload approach enables the smallest footprint and the most power-efficient design because data-path offload eliminates unnecessary complex hardware design for processing rare events.
Alacritech is focused on providing the network-attached storage (NAS) market with the industry's highest-performance solutions, which enable the greatest network throughput with lowest CPU utilization. To that end, Alacritech announced in April that its SLIC Technology enables the industry's top performing NAS solution. Alacritech announced in January that its 1000x1 Single-port Server and Storage Accelerator had achieved the industry's first wire-speed iSCSI throughput of 219.64 megabytes per second with less than 8% CPU utilization on a single Gigabit Ethernet connection. As TOEs are required for iSCSI implementations, Alacritech is also partnering with several leading networking and storage vendors.
About Alacritech, Inc.
Alacritech, Inc. was founded by Larry Boucher, creator of the SCSI interface, to deliver upon his vision of eliminating the server bottleneck. Today, Alacritech is the innovator of network accelerator solutions that enable fast and efficient servers and storage systems. Alacritech's complete line of high-performance server and storage accelerators is based on the company's patented SLIC (session-layer interface card) Technology to optimize the performance of servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. SLIC Technology is the first fully compatible and scalable technology to offload network protocol processing, primarily TCP/IP, from software on the host system to silicon on the adapter. Based in San Jose, California, Alacritech is privately held. Alacritech is a member of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and the Storage Networking Association (SNIA), and a founding member of the SNIA IP Storage Forum. 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, and the SLIC Technology logo are registered trademarks of Alacritech, Inc. in the United States. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
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