Emulex HBAs and CNAs Optimized for New Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 Series Platforms

Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today announced that its LightPulse® Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) and OneConnect(TM) Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) are optimized for use with the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series (formerly codenamed Nehalem), which combines new processor and platform architectures with new memory and I/O subsystems to provide gamechanging improvements in performance and energy efficiency. To maximize I/O bandwidth, data center servers based on the Intel Xeon processor 5500 series can leverage the Emulex LPe12000 family of 8Gb/s HBAs to achieve the highest dual-channel I/O throughput and CPU efficiency, translating into increased performance and reduced power consumption.

"The explosive growth of virtualization, mission critical databases and I/O intensive applications has created demand for faster throughput and increased I/O bandwidth," said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development, Emulex. "We are working with Intel to ensure that Emulex connectivity solutions are thoroughly tested, interoperable and optimized for the latest Intel Xeon processors, chipsets and platforms in an effort to drive improved efficiency and performance in nextgeneration data centers."

Emulex 8Gb/s LightPulse HBAs use an advanced ASIC design to complement the Intel Xeon 5500 series platform. This combination takes full advantage of performance enhancing Intel Xeon processor 5500 series features that include PCI Express 2.0, Intel VT for Directed I/O in virtualized server environments, Message-Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) and Intel® QuickPath Interconnect technology (QPI) for bandwidth intensive applications, resulting in dramatically improved efficiency and performance that is particularly beneficial in virtualized server environments, enabling much higher consolidation ratios and accelerated return on investment (ROI).

"The new Intel Xeon processor is a tremendous step forward in technology, with intelligent performance, automated energy efficiency and flexible virtualization. High speed networks, such as 8Gb/s Fibre Channel SAN solutions enabled by Emulex, handle the I/O throughput required to support large scale enterprise virtualization deployments," said Jim Pappas, Director of Server Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation. "As companies continue to expand their data centers, they can rest assured that Intel will continue to work with leading I/O vendors to provide them with the scalability, efficient performance and throughput necessary to keep a balanced system and their businesses running at high levels."

Emulex's LPe12000 family of 8Gb/s HBAs deliver enterprise scalability and flexibility through support for MSI-X and Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)-based systems, offering increased system performance through greater CPU efficiency, reduced system latency and improved I/O throughput. MSI-X is a dynamic interrupt handling mechanism in the PCI standard that is used to enable NUMA optimizations, which is ideal for virtualized server or transaction intensive environments, especially those utilizing multiprocessor and multi-core systems.

Emulex HBAs and CNAs also support virtual port (VPort) technology, so each virtual machine (VM) running on a server can independently access its own protected storage, while enabling customers to leverage SAN management tools and best practices at the VM level, including fabric zoning and LUN mapping/masking. Emulex HBAs and CNAs are managed using a secure, automated and centralized enterprise management platform that provides a single interface for the deployment, dynamic provisioning, asset management, connectivity management, security and quality of service (QoS) of I/O connectivity that is optimized for virtualized and converged networking environments.

Tags/keywords: Intel Xeon, HBAs, CNAs, virtualization, databases, PCI Express, VT-d, QPI, MSI-X, NUMA

Learn more about Emulex: http://www.emulex.com

Emulex Safe Harbor Statement

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. The company wishes to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Those factors include the rapidly changing nature of technology, evolving industry standards and frequent introductions of new products and enhancements by competitors; fluctuation in the growth of Fibre Channel and IP markets; changes in economic conditions or changes in end user demand for technology solutions; fluctuations or delays in customer orders; the highly competitive nature of the markets for Emulex's products; Emulex's ability to gain market acceptance for its products; the company's ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; the company's reliance on third-party suppliers. These and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are also discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its recent filings on Forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.