San Jose, Calif. — July 9, 2003 — Alacritech®, Inc., the innovator of data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems, today announced that it has secured a total of ten U.S. patents in the areas of network data placement, protocol offload and protocol acceleration. Alacritech develops products based on SLIC (Session Layer Interface Control) Technology®, an architecture proven to significantly increase operational efficiency and application performance of networked systems. Alacritech’s strong patent portfolio surrounding SLIC Technology further secures the company’s leadership position.

“Today we mark yet another patent milestone in accelerating data delivery in networked systems,” said Larry Boucher, president and CEO, Alacritech, Inc. “With the continued growth of data, IT managers and OEMs are demanding solutions to move data faster and more efficiently. We are pleased with the market momentum for SLIC Technology-based solutions as we continue to deliver such unique and critical technology.”

Alacritech’s high performance TCP Offload Engine (TOE) Network Interface Cards (TNICs) based on SLIC Technology are the only products capable of transparently accelerating all TCP-based traffic including email, Web, file serving, file transfer, backup, and iSCSI storage. Alacritech’s patented SLIC Technology includes the first state machine-based TCP offload. SLIC Technology-based products are used today in servers, storage, and network infrastructure products worldwide to address TCP performance and efficiency bottlenecks.

“There are tremendous technical and economic benefits to be gained with the convergence of networking and storage onto a common Ethernet-based infrastructure,” said W. Ferrell Sanders, partner, Alloy Ventures. “Alacritech saw this need early on and is now addressing the enormous market opportunity, which some industry analysts estimate to reach $5 billion by 2005. We applaud Alacritech for their vision and technical innovation.”

TOE Innovator Marks Many Industry Milestones

• April, 2000 - >Alacritech ships industry’s first TNICs based on SLIC Technology
• October, 2001 - Alacritech ships industry’s first Gigabit Ethernet TNIC
• October, 2001 - Alacritech first to deliver full-bandwidth Gigabit speed in both Ethernet and storage networking
• January, 2002 -Alacritech, Hitachi Data Systems and Nishan Systems demonstrate industry’s first wire-speed iSCSI performance
• April, 2002 - Alacritech accelerators enable Compaq NAS to achieve industry’s highest performance
• April, 2003 - Alacritech first to accelerate Microsoft iSCSI driver
• April, 2003 - Alacritech accelerators enable Microsoft Windows Server 2003 to achieve industry’s highest file server performance

About Alacritech Acceleration Technology
As systems and servers move increasing amounts of network data, new solutions are needed to solve both efficiency and throughput challenges. Alacritech’s SLIC Technology supplements the TCP software control plane with distributed hardware data planes to optimize data delivery through Ethernet-based networks. This patented TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) architecture is the foundation of Alacritech's industry-leading TOE Network Interface Cards (TNICs) designed to accelerate data delivery.

About Alacritech Patents
To date, Alacritech has been issued ten U.S. patents, and numerous other U.S. and international patent applications are pending. For more information on Alacritech intellectual property, please see Patents.

About Alacritech, Inc.
Alacritech, Inc., led by industry visionary Larry Boucher, was founded to provide data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems. Today, Alacritech is the first and only supplier of TCP Offload Engine (TOE) Network Interface Card (TNIC) solutions. Alacritech's complete line of high-performance server and storage accelerators is based on the company's patented SLIC (Session Layer Interface Control) Technology to optimize data delivery in servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. SLIC Technology, the first fully compatible and scalable TOE technology, is being delivered in the industry's leading storage and server products. 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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