San Jose, Calif. — August 25, 2004 — Alacritech® Inc., the innovator of data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems, today announced its Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator has won Network Computing’s coveted Editor’s Choice award. In a comparison review of the Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator, Adaptec® 7211C iSCSI card and QLogic™ QLA4010 SANblade™, Alacritech outperformed its competitors by offering superior processing capabilities, critical load balancing and failover features, and the lowest price. Alacritech’s iSCSI Accelerators are the only iSCSI controllers to offer seamless hardware acceleration for the Microsoft® iSCSI Software Initiator and provide customers with the fastest, most efficient iSCSI interfaces for Windows-based servers.

“By loading the SES1001T iSCSI with impressive features and eliminating some superfluous ones, Alacritech has shown it’s been paying attention to the progress and needs of the iSCSI market,” said Steven Hill, contributing editor, Network Computing Magazine. “The SES1001T has impressive data-center-level features, including link aggregation and failover.”

CMP Media LLC’s Network Computing magazine conducted the testing in its Real-World Labs® and evaluated the iSCSI HBAs on key performance and usability criteria such as installation and setup, data throughput and server CPU utilization and price point. During the bi-directional and 512-byte I/O tests, the Alacritech card outperformed its competitors every time. Alacritech’s iSCSI Accelerator was also the winner of Network Computing’s Custom Test which consisted of a challenging matrix of concurrent reads, writes and file sizes designed to hammer the system with intense but realistic access patterns. The complete review is available at http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=081904STPtest.

Key Findings

• The Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator displayed superior processing capabilities as shown by its strong bi-directional and IOps performance



• Alacritech uses the native Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator, which lets any Windows®-based computer use iSCSI-enabled storage devices



• Only Alacritech’s iSCSI Accelerator supports failover and load balancing by teaming multiple Accelerators together



• The Alacritech card enables use of the iSCSI link to communicate with switches and storage devices that support in-band management, obviating the need for a separate management connection

“The Alacritech SES1001 Accelerator combines critical transparency, management and resiliency features at a cost-conscious price to give customers a best-in-class iSCSI controller,” said Joe Gervais, director of Marketing, Alacritech Inc. “We are honored to receive Network Computing’s Editor’s Choice award, as their independent testing and analysis further reinforces the value our customers obtain with our Accelerator product lines.”

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 SES1001 line of iSCSI Accelerators support Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 and is available in both copper and fiber versions through Alacritech’s channel partners. The SES1001T with a 10/100/1000 twisted pair interface has a suggested list price of $599.00 U.S. and the SES1001F with a 1000BASE-SX fiber interface has a suggested list price of $799.00 U.S. For more information, please visit http://www.alacritech.com.

About Network Computing
For IT, By IT, Network Computing http://www.networkcomputing.com, published by CMP Media LLC, Manhasset, N.Y., is dedicated to providing critical analysis of technologies, vendors and products to 220,000 IT Managers and Staff who are accountable for strategic technology purchase decisions. In 2003, Network Computing won a total of four awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE), including a national award in the Best Technical Article category.

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.