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IRVINE, Calif., Jan 13, 2005 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor solutions enabling broadband communications, today announced that its Broadcom® RAIDCore™ BC4852 controllers are the first Serial ATA (SATA) RAID controller cards in the industry to achieve over 1 Gigabyte per second (GB/s) throughput. This unprecedented performance achievement establishes the BC4000 controller card family as the new technological benchmark for RAID throughput and performance. Broadcom announced these test results today for RAID0 sequential reads and writes, and RAID50 sequential reads, following the recent completion of an independent benchmarking review from respected industry review resource Tom's Hardware Guide, which completed its own 32-drive performance test using RAIDCore BC4852 controllers.
With the increasing use of RAID technology as the cornerstone for data storage and integrity for large databases, and with the increasing popularity of cost-sensitive digital media applications with large storage demands, the need for improved and more affordable RAID performance has become critical. To answer this need, Broadcom's RAIDCore BC4000 controller cards were developed to combine its enterprise-class XelCore™ RAID software with its BCM5770 SATA controller chip to offer affordable RAID technology that sets new benchmarks in industry performance.
Broadcom recorded actual transfer rates for sequential RAID0 reads and writes of 1.0 GB/s and 1.3 GB/s respectively, and sequential RAID50 reads and writes of 1.3 GB/s and 310 MB/s respectively. This is the first time that a performance level over one Gigabyte per second was achieved using SATA-based RAID controller technology.
The test was conducted in a controlled environment using four RAIDCore BC4852s (8-channel) RAID controllers and thirty-two 80GB Hitachi Deskstar® SATA drives running on a server with a Super Micro™ X5DPE-G2 motherboard and a 2.8 GHz Intel XEON® x2 processor. A single array of 10 Gigabytes was created using Broadcom's popular XelCore RAID software stack and controller spanning -- an XelCore feature that allows data arrays to span disks attached to different controllers. The standard Iometer test program (2003.05.10) was also used as part of the benchmark. Once Broadcom completed the test and verified its breakthrough performance, the benchmark results were then substantiated by Tom's Hardware Guide which concluded, "There is no faster way." The results of this test are available online at www.tomshardware.com.
"We consider the Broadcom RAIDCore RAID controller card family to be the price/performance leader," said Tony Asaro, Senior Analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. "The controller cards are easy to use, provide a rich feature set, offer incredible performance and the price is extremely attractive. Broadcom is poised to be an industry leader in this space based on its RAIDCore product family and is an excellent solution for small-to-medium businesses and cost-conscious customers."
"Controller spanning enables superior storage performance and enterprise- class features on industry standard server platforms," said Shriraj Gaglani, Director of Storage Marketing for Broadcom's Storage Line of Business. "Customers with IT budget constraints can now scale their storage capacity and reliability while using cost-effective, easy-to-use SATA storage."
Broadcom's RAID technology is designed for wide scale adoption in the industry based on the most extensive and robust set of enterprise-class storage and data integrity features available to all levels of businesses. Through its unique Fulcrum™ architecture, enterprise-class XelCore RAID software, and the emergence of low cost and high capacity SATA drives, Broadcom is able to offer enterprise-level features without the cost and IT-intensive processes that have kept RAID from being more widely used. It also brings to market a set of enterprise-class RAID storage solutions to existing Broadcom customers in the high-volume server and storage markets.
RAIDCore controllers from Broadcom may be ordered from storage resellers worldwide as listed on http://www.broadcom.com/products/raid_sales.php. They can also be purchased online from popular retailers such as PCMall.com, Newegg.com and eCOST.com. Additional product information and downloads are available at www.broadcom.com/storage.
About Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation is a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor solutions that enable broadband communications and networking of voice, video and data services. We design, develop and supply complete system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions incorporating digital, analog, radio frequency (RF), microprocessor and digital signal processing (DSP) technologies, as well as related hardware and software system-level applications. Our diverse product portfolio addresses every major broadband communications market, and includes solutions for digital cable and satellite set-top boxes; high definition television (HDTV); cable and digital subscriber line (DSL) modems and residential gateways; high-speed transmission and switching for local, metropolitan, wide area and storage networking; home and wireless networking; cellular and terrestrial wireless communications; Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway and telephony systems; broadband network and security processors; and SystemI/O™ server solutions. These technologies and products support our core mission: Connecting everything®.
Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and may be contacted at 1-949-450-8700 or at www.broadcom.com.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:
All statements included or incorporated by reference in this release, other than statements or characterizations of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry, management's beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us, all of which are subject to change. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "predicts," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "may," "will," "should," "would," "could," "potential," "continue," "ongoing," similar expressions, and variations or negatives of these words. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statement.
Important factors that may cause such a difference for Broadcom in connection with the RAIDCore storage products include, but are not limited to, general economic and political conditions and specific conditions in the markets we address, including the volatility in the technology sector and semiconductor industry, trends in the broadband communications markets in various geographic regions, and possible disruption in commercial activities related to terrorist activity or armed conflict in the United States and other locations; the rate at which our present and future customers and end-users adopt Broadcom's technologies and products in the markets for enterprise and consumer storage and storage networking applications; delays in the adoption and acceptance of industry standards in those markets; the timing, rescheduling or cancellation of significant customer orders and our ability, as well as the ability of our customers, to manage inventory; our ability to retain, recruit and hire key executives, technical personnel and other employees in the positions and numbers, with the experience and capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans; our ability to specify, develop or acquire, complete, introduce, market and transition to volume production new products and technologies in a cost- effective and timely manner; the gain or loss of a key customer, design win or order; competitive pressures and other factors such as the qualification, availability and pricing of competing products and technologies and the resulting effects on sales and pricing of our products; our ability to scale our operations in response to changes in demand for our products and services; the timing of customer-industry qualification and certification of our products and the risks of non-qualification or non-certification; our ability to timely and accurately predict market requirements and evolving industry standards and to identify opportunities in new markets; changes in our product or customer mix; the volume of our product sales and pricing concessions on volume sales; intellectual property disputes and customer indemnification claims and other types of litigation risk; the availability and pricing of third party semiconductor foundry and assembly capacity and raw materials; fluctuations in the manufacturing yields of our third party semiconductor foundries and other problems or delays in the fabrication, assembly, testing or delivery of our products; the risks of producing products with new suppliers and at new fabrication and assembly facilities; the effects of new and emerging technologies; problems or delays that we may face in shifting our products to smaller geometry process technologies and in achieving higher levels of design integration; the quality of our products and any remediation costs; the effectiveness of our expense and product cost control and reduction efforts; the risks and uncertainties associated with our international operations, particularly in light of recent events; the effects of natural disasters, public health emergencies, international conflicts and other events beyond our control; the level of orders received that can be shipped in a fiscal quarter; and other factors.
Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, recent Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss the foregoing risks as well as other important risk factors that could contribute to such differences or otherwise affect our business, results of operations and financial condition. The forward-looking statements in this release speak only as of this date. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
Broadcom®, the pulse logo, Connecting everything®, the Connecting everything logo, Fulcrum™, RAIDCore™, SystemI/O™ and XelCore™ are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. Deskstar® is a trademark of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Netherlands, B.V. Super Micro™ is a trademark of Super Micro Computer, Inc. Intel® and Intel XEON® are trademarks of Intel Corporation. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
Broadcom Trade Press Contact
Scott Harlin
Public Relations Manager
949-926-5226
sharlin@broadcom.com
Broadcom Business Press Contact
Bill Blanning
Vice President, Public Relations
949-926-5555
blanning@broadcom.com
Broadcom Technical Contact
Steve McIntosh
Product Marketing Manager, RAIDCore
603-324-1519
mcintosh@broadcom.com
Broadcom Investor Relations Contact
T. Peter Andrew
Sr. Director, Investor Relations
949-926-5663
andrewtp@broadcom.com
SOURCE Broadcom Corporation
trade press, Scott Harlin, Public Relations Manager, +1-949-926-5226, sharlin@broadcom.com, or business press, Bill Blanning, Vice President, Public Relations, +1-949-926-5555, blanning@broadcom.com, or technical, Steve McIntosh, Product Marketing Manager, RAIDCore, +1-603-324-1519, mcintosh@broadcom.com, or investors, T. Peter Andrew, Sr. Director, Investor Relations, +1-949-926-5663, andrewtp@broadcom.com, all of Broadcom
