First Serial Attached SCSI Plugfest Held at UNH-IOL

Sixteen Companies Test Their Products for Interoperability

San Francisco and Durham, N. H., March 17, 2004 — The UNH InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) and the SCSI Trade Association (STA), a member-run industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, concluded the industry’s first full-scale Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interoperability plugfest. The test event, held March 1-5, included many of the industry’s leading disk drive, controller, test equipment, cable, connector and system suppliers. Engineers tested SAS components and systems for multi-vendor interoperability.

Participating companies included Adaptec, Inc., Amphenol, Catalyst Enterprises, CATC, Data Transit, Dell Corp., Expert Analytical Systems, Fujitsu, HP, Hitachi GST, I-Tech Corp., LSI Logic Corp., Maxtor Corp., Molex, PMC-Sierra and Seagate Technology.

Harry Mason, Director, Industry Marketing, LSI Logic and President of STA, stated, “Since the first of the year, SAS products have been announced to the industry in a flurry of press releases. The plugfest was timed appropriately to permit vendors to test for interoperability. STA found that working with UNH-IOL was highly beneficial as attendees were professionally and expeditiously assisted with testing their products.”

“One way to be sure that a technology is maturing is to provide a formal, industry-wide platform for unbiased multi-vendor testing,” said David Woolf, principle test engineer for the UNH-IOL’s SAS test event. “This first time around, we saw an excellent show of commitment to conformance and interoperability from the vendors, who are clearly committed to properly implementing and rapidly moving SAS forward.”

Michael Micheletti, Senior Product Manager, CATC, test equipment vendor attending the plugfest, was very pleased with the results, commenting, “This was the best plugfest I ever attended and it far exceeded my expectations. The organization of the event was excellent and the various testing locations permitted attendees to work together easily to verify interoperability of their components and systems.”

The plugfest’s primary technical focus was on initiator and target devices. It also included test in the following areas:

• Physical layer
• Cables
• Backplanes
• Rate matching
• Testing on an ad hoc basis
  • Out of Band (OOB)
  • SATA devices
  • SAS expanders

Everyone attending the plugfest was able to work successfully in some way with multiple vendors, achieving their reasonable expectations.

The second plugfest has been scheduled for the week of June 21-25 at UNH-IOL. The June event will begin the process of understanding issues that arise at a more complex system level, rather than the device level. June 23-24 have been designated as SATA-SAS interoperability days. STA is planning additional plugfests later in the year, also to be hosted at UNH-IOL, an honorary member of STA.

For more information, or to register for the June plugfest, please visit the STA plugfest web site at: www.scsita.org/news_events/plugfests/plugfests.html.

About the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory
Established in 1988, the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) is a non-profit organization that offers comprehensive interoperability and conformance-based testing through 17 technology-based groups, called consortiums. Test solutions created at the UNH-IOL offer a set of methods to increase interoperability through protocol operations, signaling, point-to-point and multi-system scenarios. For more information, visit the UNH-IOL website at: http://www.iol.unh.edu.

About the SCSI Trade Association
STA was established in 1995 to provide a focal point for members to communicate the benefits of SCSI to the industry. STA promotes the understanding and use of SCSI technology and influences the evolution of SCSI standards to meet future industry needs. The Association has an eight-member Board of Directors, which oversees the Marketing Communications and Technology Committees and all STA activities. For more information, please visit the STA web site at http://www.scsita.org, send an email to info@scsita.org or call the STA office at (415) 561-6273.

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