NEWS BRIEFS

Mountain View, CALIF. — 3ware Inc., a pioneer of innovative storage solutions, announced the results of an industry-standard benchmark for testing and measuring of RAID performance. In an independent evaluation, National Technical Systems, Inc., the leading provider of certified testing and IT solutions in the industry, reported that 3ware’s Escalade packet-switched RAID controllers, using ATA/100 disk drives, outperformed the Adaptec 2100S and Mylex’s AcceleRAID 352 SCSI products by more than 200 percent. This benchmark further validates 3ware’s unparalleled performance leadership in the RAID controller industry by exceeding the theoretical limitations of Ultra160 SCSI.

The benchmark testing comprises vendor-neutral performance criteria utilizing Intel’s IOMeter benchmark suite, which is designed to measure I/O performance and emulate the typical storage environments required for today’s fast-paced business conditions. The evaluation by NTS*XXCAL measured the sustained performance of 3ware’s Escalade controller, Adaptec’s SCSI RAID 2100S, and Mylex’s AcceleRAID 352 product in the areas of sequential read performance and sequential write performance. The complete findings of the evaluation can be reviewed at http://www.3ware.com . The results of the benchmark conclude the following:

Sequential Read Performance

— 163 MB/s –3ware Escalade

— 69 MB/s — Mylex AcceleRAID 352

— 63 MB/s — Adaptec 2100S

Sequential Write Performance

— 73 MB/s — 3ware Escalade

— 27 MB/s — Mylex AcceleRAID 352

— 22 MB/s — Adaptec 2100S

The test environment used was a Compaq Proliant 350 server with a single Pentium III Xeon 733MHz processor. The product configurations included 3ware’s Escalade product utilizing 8 IBM Deskstar 75GXP Ultra ATA/100, 7200rpm disk drives; Adaptec and Mylex’s products were configured with 8 Quantum Ultra160 SCSI, 7200rpm disk drives.

The results of the benchmark analysis confirm that the winning combination of a 3ware controller and ATA (also known as IDE) drives substantially exceeds industry standard SCSI-based solutions, providing a high-performance RAID alternative to traditional SCSI RAID technologies.

“3ware has set a new standard of performance that is unparalleled in the storage industry,” said Osman Sakr, operations director of testing, NTS*XXCAL. “3ware’s Escalade controller was easy to use and has exceeded speeds of traditional SCSI controllers, significantly raising the performance bar.”

“The results of the benchmark further demonstrates that with a switch-based architecture, 3ware’s controllers provide the highest performance and data availability required for the Internet economy,” said Pam Jacobs, senior vice president of marketing and strategic planning, 3ware. “3ware’s storage architectures enable unprecedented price and performance levels to meet today’s data storage requirements.”

The Escalade family of RAID storage controllers delivers higher performance and reliability than traditional SCSI RAID controllers at a fraction of the cost. Escalade controllers incorporate patented packet-switching technology (DiskSwitch) to deliver unparalleled performance for data intensive applications. 3ware’s DiskSwitch architecture accesses multiple drives simultaneously, yielding data transfer rates of greater than 185 MB/sec at RAID 0 and 163 MB/sec for RAID 10 read performance while providing redundancy to meet the needs of the enterprise and emerging Internet data-driven environments.

National Technical Systems, Inc. is an outsourcing services company providing organizations in the information technology (IT) and high technology markets integrated testing, certification, quality registration, systems evaluation and IT staffing services. For additional information about the company, visit its web site at http://www.ntscorp.com .

3ware is a company that creates innovative storage solutions specifically designed to meet the needs of enterprise applications. 3ware leverages proprietary algorithms and packet-switching technology, delivered in the company’s DiskSwitch-based product, to create scalable and reliable high-speed storage solutions. 3ware solutions address the fundamental issues of data storage, access, back-up, security, and management – without requiring that customers adopt new standards or deal with unfamiliar technologies. Located in Mountain View, the company has a seasoned management team and a roster of established industry partners. For more information about 3ware visit http://www.3ware.com .

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