STORAGE

ALISO VIEJO, CA -- QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq:QLGC), the only end-to-end SAN infrastructure provider, today announced the ISP2300 2Gb controller chip is now shipping on board the new StorageTek (Storage Technology Corp.) (NYSE:STK) T9840B, the industry's fastest tape drive. The T9840B Fibre Channel drive, which nearly doubles the speed of StorageTek's highly successful 9840FC, is also the most reliable, cost-effective tape drive for SAN and NAS environments. "We designed the T9840B to deliver unmatched data access speeds and sustained data transfer rates for time critical and transaction-intensive applications," said Pete Koliopolous, StorageTek marketing director, Automated Tape Solutions. "Because it is equipped with QLogic's 2Gb fabric aware, Fibre Channel interface, the drive fully exploits the latest 200MB per second SAN infrastructures and the most popular Fibre Channel hardware components. By including the ability to read tapes created on the more than 50,000 StorageTek 9840 tape drives installed in the market today, the T9840B also offers significant investment protection to current customers." The QLogic ISP2300 Fibre Channel processor allows the T9840B to connect directly to any number of Fibre Channel topologies including arbitrated loop and switched fabric environments. The highly integrated ISP2300 is a fully autonomous device that serves storage, clustering, and networking applications with the ability to manage multiple input/output (I/O) operations and associated data transfers from start to finish without host intervention. "With the introduction of the 9840 Fibre Channel tape drive, StorageTek set itself apart from the tape competition by eliminating the need for SCSI bridges," said Frank Berry, vice president of marketing, QLogic Corp. "Now StorageTek widens the gap with support for 2Gb Fibre Channel that allows sharing of tape drive resources by more servers and workstations." QLogic's end-to-end 2 Gigabit storage area network (SAN) infrastructure, consists of highly scaleable products ranging from the company's controller silicon and award-winning SANblade 2300 HBAs for servers to QLogic SANbox2(TM) switches, which are capable of networking storage at distances in excess of 100 km, scalable to over seven million nodes. This broad range of high-performance 2 Gigabit products, available from a single vendor, allows OEMs, VARs, storage service providers (SSPs) and end-users to build cost-effective, plug-and-play SANs that are centrally managed and highly available. For more information, see www.storagetek.com