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ATTO Technology Ships Industry-First Quad-Channel 8-Gb FC Host Adapter

Posted by Safe Harbor Staff
September 16, 2008

ATTO Technology, Inc., a global leader of storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, announces the release of the industries first and highest-performing (up to 6400 MB/sec. full-duplex) 8-Gigabit, quad Fibre Channel host adapter with a x8 PCI Express 2.0 bus interconnect (backward compatible with PCIe 1.1). In addition to the release of the quad-channel ATTO Celerity FC-84EN Host Adapter, the Celerity Fibre Channel product line also includes a dual and single-channel offering (Celerity FC-82EN and FC-81EN).

The quad-channel Celerity FC-84EN host adapter provides the highest available throughput for Fibre Channel applications while protecting technology investments via backward compatibility with existing 4-Gb and 2-Gb Fibre Channel infrastructures. With proven aggregate speeds of up to 3200 MB/sec. for reads or writes, the FC-84EN is capable of supporting the most intensive data applications, including 2K and 4K film editing, tape streaming and backup, rich content delivery, and complex database environments. To ensure a smooth transition path, the FC- 84EN leverages the existing Celerity Fibre Channel software and hardware architecture, allowing ATTO to deliver industry-leading quality and stable software architecture.

The Celerity 8-Gb Fibre Channel product line takes advantage of the latest in host interconnect technology with PCI Express 2.0 (PCIe 2.0), a serial, high-speed connection that doubles the throughput of PCIe 1.1 up to 4 GB/sec. Celerity 8-Gb host adapters feature ATTO’s exclusive Advanced Data Streaming (ADS™) Technology, providing controlled acceleration of large and small blocks of data, enabling users to achieve the ultimate in I/O.

Features of the Celerity 8-Gb Fibre Channel product line include:

1600 MB/sec throughput per Fibre Channel port in full-duplex mode
Proven industry interoperability with support for the SNIA host adapter API
Driver support for Windows®, Linux and the industries only Mac® OS X driver
Backward compatibility with 4-Gb and 2-Gb legacy Fibre Channel

ATTO Celerity host adapters are an integrated family of advanced storage connectivity solutions that are designed to provide reliable connectivity, intelligence and scalability. The Celerity Fibre Channel product line extends the capabilities of software and hardware, increasing overall system performance and driving intelligence to the edge of the SAN.

"The powerful combination of 8-Gigabit Fibre Channel, PCI Express 2.0 architecture, and the only host adapter with four independent channels results in the Celerity FC-84EN being the industry’s highest performing adapter," states Tim Klein, president and CEO of ATTO Technology. "This means that customers working in the most demanding environments such as 2K and 4K film editing can now satisfy the performance requirements of their application."

WEVA Partners With Universal Studios Florida For WEVA EXPO 2008 Tour

Posted by Safe Harbor Staff
April 17, 2008

WEVA International has partnered with Universal Studios Florida Production Group to plan an exclusive, behind-the-scenes tour of the Universal Studios Production Facilities for professional videographers in conjunction with the WEVA 18th Annual Wedding & Event Video Expo, August 11-14, 2008. WEVA EXPO 2008, the wedding and event video industry's largest convention and trade show will be held at Orlando Grande Lakes Resort, just 10 minutes from Universal Studios Florida.

The largest working motion picture and television studio outside of Hollywood, Universal Studios Florida boasts 9 state-of-the-art soundstages, multiple broadcast studios, and more than 100 backlot sets. Numerous feature films (including The Waterboy, Matinee, and Parenthood) have been shot on the studio backlot.

Home to cable network’s Nickelodeon, Universal Studios Florida has hosted TV programs as diverse as The Ellen Degeneres Show; The Food Network's Emeril, Live!; The Steve Harvey Show; America's Most Wanted; Fear Factor; BattleBotsIQ and TNA (Total Nonstop Action). TNA, today's popular contemporary wrestling show, is taped in Stage 21 - (adjacent to the park).

This summer, WEVA EXPO 2008 attendees will have a rare opportunity to take an optional pre-convention, behind-the-scenes tour of Universal Studios that is being planned for Monday August 11, 2008 (starting early afternoon, ending before the official WEVA EXPO 2008 Opening Night Gala at 5:45pm).

"As announced at our NAB event this week, WEVA is already at work with the Universal Studios Production Group (USPG) designing a backlot tour that is ‘professional to professional’ rather than the standard ‘visitor’ version normally presented to park guests," relates Dan Argenas, WEVA’s Director of Association Communications. "Our goal is to offer WEVA EXPO 2008 attendees an inside view of state-of-the-art television and film production that’s up close and personal."

The WEVA and USPG teams are finalizing details of the tour, including ground transportation (private busses will depart from the JW Marriott). Watch WEVA.com for more news on the Universal Studios Tour and continuous updates on all WEVA EXPO 2008 Wedding and Event Video Sessions, EXPO 2008 Trade Show, and EXPO 2008 Special Events.

ATTO Technology Releases 4th Generation 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel Host Adapters

Posted by Safe Harbor Staff
April 17, 2007

ATTO Technology, Inc., a global leader of storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, announced the release of two new models to its 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel Celerity Host Adapter product line, the Celerity FC-41EN and FC-42EN. The Celerity FC-41EN and FC-42EN represents the 4th generation of 4-Gigabit Celerity Host Adapters based on PMC-Sierra’s Tachyon® DE4 Fibre Channel controllers, offering speeds of up to 800 MB/sec. per channel and high-performance x4 PCI-Express host connections. ATTO was the first company to ship 4-Gb Fibre Channel host adapters in 2004 and with the introduction of 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel (4-Gb FC) products, ATTO adds the next generation in PCI-Express and Fibre Channel support.

With a high-performance architecture utilizing ATTO’s three years of experience with 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel, the Celerity FC-41EN and FC-42EN provide support for today’s performance-intensive application requirements such as high-definition video editing and 2K film production, along with other high-bandwidth environments, including rich content databases. In addition to utilizing PCI-Express and 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel, the Celerity FC-41EN and FC-42EN gain performance benefits by incorporating ATTO’s exclusive Advanced Data Streaming (ADS™) Technology. ADS enables the FC-41EN and FC-42EN to move large blocks of data faster and more efficiently than other available host adapters and alleviates data transfer bottlenecks while minimizing latency.

ATTO Celerity products incorporate PMC-Sierra’s industry-leading Tachyon family of controllers that feature a State-Machine design in which hardware acceleration is achieved throughout every phase of command processing. Other Fibre Channel controllers utilize embedded processors and firmware to move data, adding inherent delays to processing commands and requiring extensive re-qualification to upgrade existing products. Additionally, the Tachyon controllers scale to system CPU/Memory performance. The more horsepower a system has, the more performance you can achieve with Tachyon controllers. When coupled with ATTO’s performance-based host adapter designs and ADS Technology, customers with data-intensive applications realize a clear performance advantage.

"PMC-Sierra’s Tachyon is the industry’s leading 4 Gb/sec. Fibre Channel controller," said Kevin Burbank, director of marketing for PMC-Sierra’s Enterprise Storage Division. "We worked closely with ATTO Technology to enable the industry’s highest-performing 4-Gb Fibre Channel HBA. ATTO’s Celerity FC-41EN and FC-42EN adapters utilize the Tachyon DE4 controller to deliver exceptional I/O and bandwidth performance."

With the release of this 4th generation 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel Host Adapters, ATTO continues to provide its customers with the most fully-featured, high-performance Fibre Channel host adapters available on the market today. For customers working in environments where performance requirements are of the utmost importance, such as streaming IT applications or rich media production environments, the Celerity FC-41EN and FC-42EN offer an ideal combination of performance, features, and cost-effectiveness.

"With our comprehensive Celerity Fibre Channel host adapter product line, based on the PMC-Sierra family of Tachyon chips, we continue to provide best-of-breed 4-Gigabit host adapter solutions to data-intensive applications such as video streaming, image processing and backup," states Ed Tierney, director of marketing at ATTO Technology. "We continue to be positioned to be first-to-market with the next generation Fibre Channel performance technology using leading-edge controllers from PMC-Sierra".

ATTO Technology Demonstrates Innovative Storage Connectivity Solutions

Posted by Safe Harbor Staff
April 16, 2007

ATTO Technology, Inc., a global leader of storage connectivity and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments, is featuring five live connectivity demonstrations at the upcoming NAB show.

Located in booth SL4326 and Avid Developer Community Pod SL1413Q, ATTO will demonstrate proven, reliable high-performance connectivity solutions targeted towards high-end digital editing where workflow productivity is critical and performance must be optimal.

Demonstration One: Data Protection for Post-Production The ATTO FastStreamTM SC 5700 storage controller appliance paired with Apple's Xserve® RAID storage provides huge storage pools with simplified storage management and robust data protection with bandwidth to spare. Apple Xserve RAID users have long faced the challenge of protecting their data while simultaneously increasing useable capacity and speed without adding complexity. Visit ATTO's booth to see how FastStream SC 5700 provides Xserve RAID users with a solution that will help overcome these challenges while providing superior performance and reliability.

Demonstration Two: Scalable Direct Attached Storage ATTO will also demonstrate its new ExpressSASTM SAS/SATA RAID adapter featuring DVRAIDTM that provides parity protection in high-bandwidth environments. The ATTO ExpressSAS RAID Adapter family provides SAS/SATA II connectivity and delivers blazing-fast 3-Gb/sec. per port performance for digital media users requiring the highest performance SAS/SATA RAID solutions. It is the industry's only low-profile line of adapters offering user selectable port configuration options. Providing advanced fault-tolerant features that include hot swap, hot spares, online capacity expansion, battery back-up, and optimized disk utilization for SAS/SATA or SATA II drives or any combination, the ATTO ExpressSAS R348 and R380 adapters deliver an intelligent and robust RAID solution. The adapters support standard RAID levels 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 and feature ATTO's exclusive DVRAID, making them capable of handling the most demanding applications such as 2K and 4K film, multiple layers of complex, uncompressed real-time effects, and high definition video editing.

Demonstration Three: Storage via Ethernet This demonstration exhibits how ATTO's Xtend SANTM iSCSI initiator and the HP StorageWorks EVA allows Fibre Channel storage devices to connect to multiple servers for consolidation of large storage pools over long distances, increasing accessibility and simplifying storage management. Xtend SAN is the first, and most widely-distributed, standalone application that allows Mac® users to attach existing storage to an IP-based network. With Xtend SAN, users can take existing direct attached storage devices and make them available to multiple servers. ATTO's Xtend SAN iSCSI initiator combined with HP virtual arrays provides a cost-effective, centralized solution for expanding the boundaries of existing Fibre Channel SANs.

Demonstration Four: High-Performance Connectivity for HD Editing ATTO has teamed with Adobe and other partners in the openHDTM Alliance to provide a scalable, open, and certified solution to support HD editing. ATTO's ExpressPCI UL5D dual-channel Ultra320 PCIe SCSI host adapter combined with ATTO's Express Power Center software provides the highest available performance for demanding editing environments. Capable of supporting multiple streams (11 SD) of video including SD, HD, 2K and 4K applications, the ATTO products will demonstrate improved editing workflow. Adobe OpenHD certification provides customers with a proven turnkey solution to ensure customers reliably achieve their editing performance needs.

Demonstration Five (Avid Developer Community Pod): RAID Protection for Avid MediaDock ATTO's FastStream SC 5300 storage controller appliance is an Avid® approved device that easily adds hardware RAID protection to Avid MediaDock!" Ultra320 storage configurations. FastStream SC 5300 is optimized for Avid editing systems to add RAID protection to critical data while maintaining system performance. Designed as an external device that integrates into existing storage, the SC 5300 adds data protection and storage networking with blazing-fast performance, user-friendly one-click installation and smooth data streaming. Visit ATTO's Avid Pod demonstration at Booth #SL1413Q to see how the FastStream storage controller s 480 MB/sec throughput makes it a reliable, high-performance solution to enhance productivity of broadcast, cable, production and post-production environments.

In addition to the partner products listed above, ATTO will be utilizing equipment for these solutions from the following industry organizations: HP, Matrox, Ciprico, and AIC.

"This year's NAB provides us with the opportunity to demonstrate how ATTO solutions support high-bandwidth applications in multiple environments. We will also showcase how ATTO storage infrastructure solutions simplify and improve digital media workflow," states Ed Tierney, director of marketing for ATTO Technology, Inc.

ATTO's complete product line will be exhibited, including:

4-Gb PCIe and PCI-X Fibre Channel Host Adapters
Ultra320 PCIe SCSI Host Adapters
4-Gb Fibre Channel-to-SCSI Bridges
iSCSI Bridges
Storage Controller Appliances
Performance Striping Software

About This Blog

Safe Harbor's video and post production news blog offers you the latest announcements and updates from the industry.