Fujitsu Partners with Industry Leaders to Deliver Market Ready Small Form Factor Serial SCSI Storage Solutions

Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc., one of the world's leading suppliers of hard disk drives and computer peripherals, today announced that it has collaborated with AMD and LSI Logic Corporation to test and demonstrate astonishing performance with an enterprise storage solution utilizing the latest Fujitsu small form factor (SFF) serial attached SCSI (SAS) hard disk drives. Fujitsu will demonstrate the capability of achieving 239,000+ IO/sec (IOPS) on an AMD processor-based platform with a single SAS HBA from LSI Logic and eight SFF SAS Fujitsu disk drives. The system will be on display at the Storage Networking World conference April 12-15th in Phoenix, AZ.

Fujitsu, working together with AMD and LSI Logic, has tested and built a SAS solution with less cabling, smaller connection points, and 2.5" SFF SAS hard disk drives that increase throughput while reducing heat and power for blade servers and workstations that power mission critical data centers. Fujitsu and LSI Logic recognize the increased pressure to ensure interoperability within the enterprise and have engineered their solutions to interoperate with current SAS and serial ATA (SATA) products.

As part of its collaborative effort with AMD and LSI Logic, Fujitsu evaluated its SFF SAS hard disk drives against its own 3.5" parallel SCSI hard disk drives. The testing resulted in the Fujitsu SFF SAS hard disk drives outperforming its 3.5" parallel SCSI hard disk drives by over 398%, clearly demonstrating that the SAS interface is the choice for high-performance storage solutions.

"By delivering SFF SAS hard disk drives to the leading manufacturers nearly one year ahead of the market, Fujitsu has been in the position to work with market leaders to evaluate the market and develop applications that are pre-tested for enterprise interoperability and reliability," said Mike Chenery, vice president, Advanced Product Engineering, Fujitsu Computer Products of America. "Serial connectivity offers clear advantages over parallel architecture, and together with AMD and LSI Logic, we have built a better system in a fraction of the space for a fraction of the cost."

LSI Logic SAS controllers provide 1.5 and 3 Gb/s data transfer rates per port and enable Integrated RAID solutions in storage environments including servers, workstations, blade servers and external storage systems. The controllers also leverage an electrical and physical interface that is compatible with Serial ATA technology ensuring enterprise interoperability and performance. LSI Logic expanders comply with the SAS standard which includes the proven SCSI command set, while allowing for point-to-point connection, increased device bandwidth, higher availability with dual-ported drives, enhanced reliability, and greater flexibility.

"LSI Logic is the recognized leader in driving and developing storage interface standards and technologies and we are proud to leverage our expertise with other SAS market leaders to speed market delivery of enterprise serial applications," said David Steele, director of product planning and management at LSI Logic. "LSI Logic controllers, expanders and HBAs are fuelling the next generation of direct attach storage for enterprise server and high performance workstations."

More than 40 percent of the Forbes Global 100 companies or their affiliates, representing the world's most competitive industries, have implemented servers and workstations based on the AMD Opteron processor, the world's first x86-based processor to deliver both 32- and 64-bit computing.

"AMD recognizes the value of working with leaders like Fujitsu and LSI to leverage global resources and help deliver innovative storage solutions to our customers," said Ben Williams, vice president, commercial and server/workstation business, Microprocessor Business Unit, Computation Products Group, AMD. "We have seen a rapid adoption of the AMD Opteron™ processor with Direct Connect Architecture – proof of customers' continued enthusiasm for extremely powerful x86-based 64-bit computing."

The AMD Opteron processor, based on AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, made history as the industry's first demonstration of a multi-core, x86 processor. Direct Connect Architecture connects multiple processors, the memory controller and the I/O directly to the central processor unit, helping to eliminate the bottlenecks inherent in a front-side bus. The AMD Opteron processor currently provides industry-leading performance-per-watt, a position AMD plans to extend with the planned launch of dual-core AMD Opteron processors in mid-2005.