Vitesse First To Support 2Gb/s Fibre Channel Enclosure Services Interface; Enclosure Management Controller Available Now
CAMARILLO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 1, 2000--Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:VTSS) today announced enclosure management support for 2Gb/s Fibre Channel disc drives through the Enclosure Services Interface (ESI) of the SFF-8067 specification using the SSC200 Enclosure Management Controller.
The SSC200 also fully complies with the initiated mode of the EIE (Enclosure Initiated ESI) specification, allowing information transfers to and from the enclosure controller. This generally available controller is being used in 1Gb/s applications now and has been successfully tested in several 2Gb/s Fibre Channel environments using industry-leading disc drives from Seagate Technology, Inc. (NYSE:SEG).
"We are pleased to work with Vitesse as they test their SSC200 enclosure management controller with our leading-edge 2Gb/s Fibre Channel disc drives," said Michael Graham, Marketing Manager for Seagate's Enterprise Products. "Our Fibre Channel disc drives are ideal for mission-critical applications. By interfacing to the Vitesse enclosure management controller, it allows our customer base to deliver the highest level of storage quality, reliability, and performance within demanding storage, server, and workstation applications," continued Graham.
"In today's world, the storage industry is exploding and corporations need a way to monitor their mission-critical server and storage enclosures on a 24x7 basis. These corporations must be able to manage their most important asset, their digital data, and the need to access this data with 99.999% uptime is mandatory," said Tom Brokaw, Senior Product Marketing Manager in the SAN Products Group. "Vitesse offers complete enclosure management solutions needed to monitor and control all aspects of servers and storage subsystems. The SSC200 is one of the products from Vitesse that allows our customers to meet the most stringent of system requirements," continued Brokaw.
The SSC200 is a highly integrated Enclosure Management Controller used to monitor and control the physical environment within a Fibre Channel server or storage enclosure. The SSC200 supports two fully independent enclosure service interfaces, configured completely by the Software Developers Kit (SDK) firmware provided by Vitesse. This firmware allows the SSC200 to detect the presence or absence of functional disc drives, examine power supplies and fans, as well as monitor the temperature within the enclosure, and pass this critical information back to a system for display and/or programmed action. With support for SES and IPMI, the SSC200 is the only single-chip system solution available for server backplanes or as a full-featured chassis management controller in 2Gb/s storage subsystems.
"Having a complete solution like the SSC200 allows our customers to upgrade their Fibre Channel storage designs from 1Gb/s to 2Gb/s without having to modify their enclosure management hardware or firmware," stated Brokaw. "That certainly reduces the design cycle, R&D costs, and allows our customers to introduce new state of the art products to the storage market in record time, while supporting mission critical diagnostic features," concluded Brokaw.
For high-end storage systems, additional I/O may be needed to meet system requirements. A companion device to the SSC200, the VSC055 Enhanced Backplane Controller integrates most of the enclosure management related digital logic found in these high-end storage subsystems. The VSC055 includes sixty-four bi-directional, highly programmable, general purpose I/O pins, all capable of driving LEDs with a programmable flash rate. All I/O pins have 12mA drive strength, support 3.3V TTL, and are 5V tolerant. To enable the designer to configure and program the device, the 64 I/Os are arranged in registers of eight pins. Eight of the I/O pins can optionally monitor fan speed. And eight pulse width modulated outputs are also optionally available for fan control. Sixteen pairs of I/O pins provide additional control over off-chip FC-AL port bypass circuits.
The SSC200 and VSC055 are both packaged in low-cost 100-pin PQFPs. The 1000-piece pricing is $12.00 for the SSC200 and $10.40 for the VSC055 and both are in full production now. To further reduce R&D costs and shorten time to market, a complete development platform is available for each device. This development platform includes a Software Development Kit (SSC200 only), reference designs, design-in guide, evaluation board, and complete documentation.
Seagate Technology, Inc. is a leading provider of technology and products enabling people to store, access, and manage information. The Company is committed to providing best-in-class products to help people get information when, where and how they want it. Seagate is the world's largest manufacturer of disc drives, magnetic discs and read-write heads, an innovator in tape drives, and a leading developer of Enterprise Information Management software. Seagate can be found around the globe and at seagate.com.
Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation is the leading designer and supplier of innovative, high performance semiconductors utilizing state-of-the-art processes -- for the communications equipment manufacturers of next generation DWDM and optical networking, as well as storage area networking ICs and enclosure management products that monitor and communicate critical reliability and availability information. The Company's products address the needs of Core, Access, Optical and Enterprise network equipment manufacturers who demand a combination of high speed, high complexity and low power dissipation. Vitesse has been a primary developer of Fibre Channel technology and a contributor to the NCITS X3T11 Fibre Channel committee, and the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA). Vitesse is headquartered in Camarillo, and manufactures volume ICs at its two fabrication facilities in Camarillo and Colorado Springs. Company/product information can be found on the Web at www.vitesse.com.
CONTACT:
Vitesse Semiconductor
Patricia Ito, 805/388-3700
ito@vitesse.com
or
CMC Public Relations
Caroline Melnicoff, 650/324-8819
cmp1@earthlink.net |
