I don't get it. Why isn't this a more talked about stock? This company just delivered the world's first Fibre Channel RAID system and nobody blinks an eye. This company is sound, 48M in assets, 5M in liabilities, great earnings and little long-term debt. Only 5M float.
Who is their main competition?
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Ciprico Leads World with First Deliveries of High-Speed Fibre Channel
RAID Disk Array to Sony Pictures Imageworks
November 18, 1996, Minneapolis, MN - Ciprico, Inc. (NASDAQ: CPCI) today announced that Sony Pictures Imageworks,
Sony's state-of-the-art visual effects and digital animation production facility, has received the world's first production
shipments for high-bandwidth Fibre Channel RAID disk arrays. Fibre Channel represents the latest cutting-edge
technology for high-performance storage and networking. Ciprico has implemented Fibre Channel technology in the 7000
Series of high-performance disk arrays, representing a 300% performance increase over the current SCSI-2 interface
standard. The new 7000 Series Fibre Channel disk arrays are the first in their class to be shipping in production from any
vendor worldwide.
The 7000 Series disk arrays will enable Sony Pictures Imageworks to view real-time film-resolution playback (2048 x
1107) of CGI (computer generated images) at nearly 200 MB per second - an unheard of feat until now. Sony Pictures
Imageworks will be combining three Fibre Channel disk arrays on a single SGI server, setting a new level of performance
with a storage system.
"The 7000 Series exceeded our expectations in performance, reliability and scalability at the Sony Pictures Imageworks
Systems Research facility," said Todd Outten, Director of System Research, Sony Pictures Imageworks. "We have
demonstrated rates exceeding 80 MB per second from a single disk array, and rates of 200 MB per second were easily achieved
by combining three arrays. Reliability is provided by Ciprico's RAID controller and by the arrays' redundant power supply
and cooling components," stated Outten.
"Our new 7000 disk array provides the highest performance of any disk storage system available in the market today," said
Robert H. Kill, Ciprico President and CEO. "Uncompressed playback of film resolution images requires immense
performance levels that were not possible with previous generations of storage systems. This capability, long anticipated in
the production and broadcast industries, allows the creative freedom and flexibility to take visual effects to a level never
seen before."
The 7000 Series will also be demonstrated November 13-15 in Tokyo, Japan, at InterBEE (International Broadcast
Equipment Exhibition), the largest Japanese broadcasting trade show. Ciprico's 7000 Series disk arrays will be part of a
demonstration at a preview station in Silicon Graphics' booth showing real-time storage and playback at film resolution of
uncompressed images. InterBEE attendees will be the first in the Pacific Rim to see a disk array capable of this level of
performance.
Ciprico's 7000 connects to hosts via the Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop interface, supporting burst data rates of 100
MB/second. No other serial interface has this kind of performance capabilities for high bandwidth applications.
The 7000 uses standard SCSI-2 disk drives within the array, offering capacity options ranging to approximately 72 GB in a
single array. The array's performance does not degrade with single drive failures--an important feature for critical
real-time applications. Redundancy capabilities include hot swap disk drives, power supplies and cooling modules.
In addition to film/video and broadcast applications, the 7000 series will benefit other high bandwidth applications where
users need to transfer large amounts of data rapidly. Applications based on video servers such as video-on-demand get more
streams of video than from traditional disk arrays. For medical imaging, the 7000 supports higher image densities at 30
frames per second.
Ciprico Inc, an ISO certified company, designs, manufactures, markets and services disk arrays and SCSI adapters for the
high-performance imaging and digital media markets. The company's products are sold worldwide to technical, scientific,
and creative professionals who require high performance, large capacities, and fault tolerance from their storage. More
information about Ciprico can be obtained through the Internet at Ciprico's Web site: www.ciprico.com
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