LINUXWORLD EXPO, MOSCONE CENTER, San Francisco, August 13, 2002 -- 3ware®, Inc., a leading provider of switched RAID solutions, today announced Serial ATA support for AMD’s (NYSE: AMD) upcoming AMD Opteron™ and AMD Athlon™ processors based on AMD’s Hammer technology. AMD will demonstrate its 64-bit technology at LinuxWorld Expo in AMD’s booth number 747 August 13 – 15, 2002. 3ware will display its new family of RAID controller cards based on Serial ATA specifications – the Escalade 8500 series – in booth number R8.

Serial ATA support combined with 64-bit processing will deliver high-performance server solutions for the most demanding enterprise applications. The solution increases overall performance by removing or reducing I/O bottlenecks, increasing bandwidth and reducing latency, which will result in a lower total cost of ownership.
The demonstration is aimed at OEMs, VARs and systems builders seeking to offer high performance, reliable and cost effective network storage solutions for large-scale applications such as e-mail servers, Web farms, digital video and storage subsystems.

Rex Meek, Director, Hardware-Infrastructure Enablement Group, AMD’s Computational Products Group said, "3ware’s announcement adds to the widespread industry support for the upcoming AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon processors based on Hammer technology. 3ware’s RAID storage provides reliable, scalable, high-performance storage connectivity and management solutions. Enterprise customers will benefit from an AMD and 3ware platform providing terabytes of scalable, performance-driven network storage based on powerful 64-bit computing environments."

Mike Wentz, senior director of product marketing at 3ware said, "By supporting AMD’s innovative 64-bit Hammer architecture, we are paving the way for tomorrow’s storage applications. The Escalade series is based on fourth generation switching technology that is already being successfully used by 3ware customers, delivering reliable, real world solutions for today’s storage needs. Our alliance with AMD will help ensure that our customers will have a seamless path as they migrate from 32- to 64-bit systems."

The Escalade 8500 is the highest capacity Serial ATA controller available. The Escalade 8500 series is available now in four, eight and twelve-port configurations supporting over 2 terabytes of storage capacity. The new controllers extend 3ware’s high performance ATA controller line to support the Serial ATA interface standard, providing terabytes of reliable, performance-based Serial ATA RAID storage.

3ware is the only architecture that can easily scale from 4 drives to 12 drives providing the most complete suite of products. Traditional technologies such as parallel ATA and SCSI use a bus-based architecture where all the drives share a single bus, which can compromise performance and scalability. The 3ware architecture is the first storage technology to use a point-to-point connection topology enabling truly scalable, high performance storage solutions using inexpensive and reliable Serial ATA drives. 3ware’s field-proven, non-blocking switched fabric design allows the controller to simultaneously access all connected drives, delivering much higher performance than competitive SCSI or Serial ATA solutions.

The Escalade 8500 family of RAID controllers support up to 4 drives (Model 8500-4), 8 drives (Model 8500-8) or 12 drives (Model 8500-12). The CBL-P-SATA converter kit allows the use of Serial ATA cables with standard parallel drives. Products are now available worldwide through authorized 3ware distributors. Please contact 1-877-88-3ware (9273) for additional information or visit 3ware on the Web at www.3ware.com

Founded in 1997, 3ware, Inc., the technology leader in switched RAID storage solutions, delivers reliable, scalable, network-managed, high-performance storage. 3ware products are based on 3ware’s StorSwitch architecture, which applies network packet switching to storage controllers. 3ware solutions are designed to meet the explosive new demand for cost-effective, scalable storage, driven by enterprise networking applications. 3ware sells through VARs, OEMs and System Integrators. 3ware, Inc. is located in Mountain View, California with sales offices and distribution in the USA, Europe and Japan. 3ware is on the Web at www.3ware.com.