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IRVINE, Calif., Sep 20, 2004 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor solutions enabling broadband communications, today announced Linux® support for its family of Broadcom® RAIDCore™ RAID controller cards. Now supporting both the Microsoft® Windows® and Linux operating systems, the BC4000 series of RAID controllers provide a broader range of support and capabilities to enterprise users and small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), featuring the industry's most extensive Serial ATA (SATA)-based RAID functionality for maintaining data integrity and fast data access.
There is a significant growth opportunity for SATA-based RAID controller cards in the midrange server market, especially in support of the Linux operating system. According to IDC's "U.S. and Worldwide 2004-2008 Server Forecast" (April 2004), Linux is the fastest growing server market segment with projected 5-year growth rates of 27% for all server unit shipments and 42% for midrange server unit shipments. This accelerated growth is particularly strong in Europe where the promise of open source and low cost has helped make Linux the platform of choice for high-profile government projects in Munich, Paris and Bergen.
The Broadcom RAIDCore BC4000 series of RAID controller cards will initially support Red Hat® 9, Red Hat Enterprise 3.0 and Fedora™ Core 1 Linux platforms. SuSE® Linux support is scheduled for availability during the fourth quarter of 2004. As a result of this support, Linux users can now take advantage of enterprise-class SATA RAID features from Broadcom that include online capacity expansion, controller spanning and online RAID level migration.
The BC4000 RAID controller cards bring to market the industry's most extensive and robust feature set for SATA-based applications through Broadcom's XelCore™ RAID software (based on the proprietary Fulcrum™ architecture -- a highly integrated storage architecture). By deploying XelCore software, the BC4000 controllers deliver support for all the popular RAID levels (0, 1, 5, 10, 50, 1n, 10n, JBOD) and robust enterprise-class features including multiple array types per drive. This feature provides Linux users with the benefits of deploying different RAID levels across the same set of drives. For example, a video editor who creates a RAID0 array and a RAID1 array across a common drive set can take advantage of the high performance RAID0 capabilities for editing the video data, as well as the data integrity capabilities of RAID1 when storing the completed videos. Since the RAID0 and RAID1 activities are all performed across the same set of drives, drive utilization is maximized.
Leading the industry in SATA RAID data access performance, the Linux-based BC4852 eight-channel controller card delivers RAID0 sequential reads and writes of 430 and 450 megabytes per second (MB/s) respectively, and RAID5 sequential reads and writes of 310 and 280 MB/s, respectively. With this outstanding performance, the BC4852 and its 4-channel counterpart, the BC4452, both continue to offer performance leadership versus competitive SATA-based RAID controller cards.
"Thanks to the fact that our SATA-based RAID controller cards set a new standard in performance and functionality, the Linux community has requested Linux drivers ever since our first products became available," said Tom Marmen, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Storage Line of Business. "Given the demand for Linux support, we are excited to offer our leading data integrity and data access RAID technology to those building their mission critical solutions on Linux platforms."
"MailRoute's e-mail protection service provides its customers superior data integrity and convenience through enterprise-class storage technology," said Tom Johnson, CEO for MailRoute. "When you deal with as much storage as we do, it is essential to keep control of your costs while enhancing service quality. The Linux-based RAIDCore BC4852 provides the exceptional combination of high performance, data integrity and low cost that we need to maintain our leadership and reputation. In addition, the flexibility and expandability of the BC4852 are key differentiators that allow us to realize cost savings as we grow, and these savings can be passed on to our customers."
The Broadcom RAIDCore BC4000 series is comprised of 64-bit, PCI-X low-profile compliant RAID controller cards that are the only 2U-compatible PCI-X SATA RAID controller cards available today. The product family provides both four-drive (BC4452) and eight-drive (BC4852) support and is based on Broadcom's BCM5770 Serial ATA controller chip. The BC4000 controller cards significantly boost reliability with efficient power consumption and thermal load balancing, and feature an MTBF (mean time between failures) of 3.5 million hours, which is nearly three times greater than that of competitive SATA RAID controller cards. The BC4000 family combines enterprise-class data integrity, data access performance and reliability at SMB price points.
Pricing and Availability
The Broadcom RAIDCore BC4000 SATA-based RAID controller cards are available for purchase by end-users from online retailers including Webconnexxion, PC Mall and eCOST, and from resellers of storage solutions. Resellers can purchase RAIDCore controller cards from Ideal Hardware (in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe), ServerBits (in Australia and New Zealand), and Bell Microproducts (in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and South America).
The manufacturer's suggested list prices are $365 (U.S.) for the 8-channel controller card (BC4852) and $289 (U.S.) for the 4-channel controller card (BC4452). Linux support for the BC4000 family is offered through downloads from the Broadcom website. Drivers, manuals, management applications, BIOS and additional information for BC4000 products are available online 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 its 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; our ability to scale our operations in response to changes in demand for our products and services; 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; 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. Linux® is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Microsoft® and Windows® are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Red Hat® and Fedora™ are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. SuSE® is a trademark of SuSE Linux AG, a Novell business. Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
For more information please contact:
Broadcom Trade Press Contact
Scott Harlin
Sr. Communications Specialist
949-926-5226
sharlin@broadcom.com
Broadcom Business Press Contact
Bill Blanning
Sr. Director, Corporate Communications
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, Sr. Communications Specialist,
949-926-5226, sharlin@broadcom.com,
or Business Press, Bill Blanning, Sr.
Director, Corporate Communications, 949-926-5555, blanning@broadcom.com,
or
Technical Contact, Steve McIntosh, Product Marketing Manager, RAIDCore,
603-324-1519, mcintosh@broadcom.com,
or Investor Relations, T. Peter
Andrew, Sr. Director, Investor Relations, 949-926-5663,
andrewtp@broadcom.com, all of Broadcom
http://www.broadcom.com/storage
