IBM Offers OEM Customers Early Opportunity to Develop High-Performance
Products Using Serial Storage Architecture

SAN JOSE, May 2, 1995 . . . IBM today announced a family of adapter cards
that, along with previously announced disk drives, provides Original
Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with an expanded line of building blocks
for storage products that implement Serial Storage Architecture (SSA).

These components will accelerate the development of products based on SSA,
an emerging industry standard for transferring data between computer
processors and peripheral equipment such as magnetic and optical disk
drives, tape drives and printers. SSA offers users a high-speed, low-cost
means of implementing serial data transfer and is the only serial storage
interface available in the marketplace today.

The new adapter cards will allow SSA disk drives or subsystems to be
attached to personal computers, workstations and servers that contain
high-performance data buses using the Peripheral Component Interconnect
(PCI) standard. The cards, which support a wide variety of operating
systems and hardware platforms, are the:

   o IBM SSA Adapter for Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI),
     Model PNS4-20, which supports two SSA loops with a data transfer
     rate of up to 160 megabytes per second (MB/sec) and over 3,000
     I/O request commands per second.  The adapter card will support
     up to 96 devices.

   o IBM SSA RAID Adapter for PCI, Model PRS4-20, which provides
     RAID 0, 1, 3 and 5 functions for high availability in
     combination with the high-performance features of SSA.  It
     also supports two SSA loops and will provide a data transfer
     rate of up to 160 MB/sec and over 1,000 RAID 5 I/O commands per
     second.  The card will support up to 96 devices.

These adapters may be used in conjunction with IBM Ultrastar XP 2.0GB and
Ultrastar XP 4.0GB disk drives containing SSA interfaces, as well as with
SSA peripherals provided by other vendors. IBM announced the availability
of SSA drives to the OEM marketplace in February.

IBM will make available adapter kits for manufacturers interested in
evaluating the integration of SSA adapters into their systems. The adapter
kits include an IBM SSA PCI Adapter or PCI RAID adapter, an IBM Ultrastar
XP 4.0GB SSA Disk Drive, an SSA cable, and device drivers and utilities.

"OEMs who want to play in the exciting application areas of videostreaming
and multimedia know that they'll need to offer products with
high-performance serial interfaces," said Ray AbuZayyad, general manager,
IBM Storage Products Company, a unit of the Storage Systems Division. "Our
SSA adapters and disk drives will help customers get an early start in
developing products for these applications. SSA is a technology not just
for tomorrow's products -- but for today's as well."

   SSA Adapter Cards Support High Performance Operation

Significant cost savings can be achieved with the IBM PNS4-20 adapter card
because it allows many more devices to be attached to a single adapter
without loss of performance than is possible with traditional SCSI
interfaces. With device drivers provided for five different operating
systems, these adapters support a large portion of the server platforms
available today.

The adapter uses the SCSI-2 command set, which maximizes the user's
investment in software and eases migration from SCSI. The PNS4-20 adapter
attaches to multiple operating systems and hardware platforms. It will be
available initially with IBM OS/2* and Novell NetWare* device drivers. IBM
plans to offer IBM AIX*, Microsoft Windows NT* and SCO UNIX* drivers
later.

The SSA PCI RAID Adapter, Model PRS4-20, supports up to 96 SSA devices on 4
SSA ports. RAID levels 0, 1, 3 and 5 can be mixed on the same SSA loop,
providing a high degree of flexibility. With its support for hot spares
and comprehensive RAID functions, the PRS4-20 adapter provides the highest
level of data availability possible, even in multi-system environments.

The PRS4-20 adapter is initially available with OS/2 and NetWare device
drivers. IBM intends to offer AIX, Windows NT and SCO UNIX drivers later.

    Serial Storage Architecture -- It's Available Today

The SSA adapters announced today take advantage of the emerging SSA
standard. SSA is the only serial interface that is suitable for use in
devices intended for attachment to processors covering the spectrum from
mainframes to PCs. It provides higher levels of performance, fault
tolerance, data availability and connectivity than is possible with
today's parallel interfaces, such as SCSI, and is ideally suited for video
applications, data servers and "mission critical" data.

Among the functions provided with SSA is a unique capability called
"spatial reuse," which allows data to be transferred concurrently at high
speeds between many pairs of serially connected peripherals, without the
need to route the data through the processor. This leads to a more
effective utilization of the system's resources in environments where
users may be moving data from a CD-ROM to memory, from a disk drive to a
tape backup unit, and from memory to a printer, all at the same time from
the same processor.

SSA offers superior performance. Its fundamental building block is a single
port capable of carrying on two 20 MB/sec conversations at once -- one
inbound and one outbound. AN SSA node consists of two ports, allowing four
conversations to be carried on simultaneously, for a total interface
bandwidth of 80 MB/sec. In contrast, SCSI and FC-AL can carry on only a
single conversation at a time.

SSA's dual-port, full-duplex architecture allows peripherals to be
connected in loop configurations designed to contain no single point of
failure. SSA's serial interface loop significantly improves connectivity
while its auto-configuration capability enables the true potential for hot
plugging, plug and play and dynamic reconfiguring. Low cost is achieved
through the use of compact cables and connectors and by imbedding all
circuitry into a single CMOS chip.

SSA is fully compatible with the Fiber Channel Interface (FCI), which
allows interconnection of processors separated by large distances. In
contrast to another proposed serial interface -- Fibre-Channel-Arbitrated
Loop (FC-AL) -- SSA is less costly, has higher reliability, provides an
easier migration path for systems currently operating with SCSI, and is
available today in adapters and devices from multiple suppliers.

SSA is supported by an increasing number of silicon, adapter, storage and
system manufacturers, including members of the SSA Industry Association
(SSA IA). The SSA IA was formed earlier this year to promote the
acceptance of the SSA standard within the industry. Its membership
includes more than 25 manufacturers of systems and peripheral products.

The IBM SSA adapters and adapter kits are available for OEMs in the U.S.,
and for distributors and OEMs in Europe and Asia-Pacific.

                     Prices and Availability

                           OEM Evaluation     Evaluation Unit
Product                      Unit Price        Availability

Model PNS4-20 IBM PCI
  Non-RAID Adapter Card         $750            June 1995

Model PNS4-20 SSA
  Non-RAID Adapter Kit        $2,500            June 1995

Model PRS4-20 SSA PCI
  RAID Adapter Card           $1,200            July 1995

Model PRS4-20 SSA
  PCI RAID Adapter Kit        $5,500            July 1995

IBM is the world's largest supplier of computer storage products. Through
its Storage Systems Division, the company provides a full line of storage
solutions for IBM computing systems, for OEMs and for commercial
distribution. Its offerings include disk drives, arrays and subsystems;
magnetic tape drives, subsystems and automated libraries; optical drives
and libraries; storage controllers and related storage management
software.

Information about SSA can be obtained by contacting the SSA Industry
Association at 408-256-5656 or by FAX at 408-256-0595.

IBM news releases are available on the Internet, via the IBM Home Page at
http://www.ibm.com

The IBM Fax Information Service allows you to receive facsimiles of prior
IBM product press releases. Dial 1-800-IBM-4FAX and enter "99" at the
voice menu.

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