Microsemi's New Smart Storage I/O Controllers Unlock Flash Performance in Data Center Servers

With over 30 million unit shipments worldwide to date, Microsemi's Smart Storage Stack offers one of the industry's most reliable and highest performing storage controller software platforms. The Smart Storage Platform now available in production release delivers advanced security features, such as maxCrypto controller-based encryption and enterprise-class data protection support, while providing high performance and a significant advantage in operating costs due to significant power savings compared to previous generations and competing product offerings. The solution achieves up to 1.6 million random read I/O operations per second and delivers greater than 35 percent power savings compared to competing solutions.

"Our next generation server storage solutions offer a common firmware and software stack across host bus adapters (HBAs), redundant array of independent disks (RAID) and other applications, enabling our original equipment manufacturers, original design manufacturers and hyperscale customers to deliver a variety of custom boards with rapid time to market," said Pete Hazen, vice president and business unit manager, scalable storage, at Microsemi. "Feedback from our lead customers has been extremely positive as they finalize qualification of designs anticipated for production launch with the release of next generation server platforms later this year."

Microsemi's smart storage solutions can be used in any server storage application with 12 Gbps SAS or 6 Gbps SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) or solid state drives (SSDs). SAS/SATA HDDs and SSDs are forecasted by market research firm IDC to represent 80 percent of all enterprise drives shipped on an annual basis through the end of the decade. Microsemi's smart storage solutions are performance-optimized around SSD performance and power-optimized for HDD-based cold storage. Features are available for both deployment extremes in addition to a myriad of hybrid SSD/HDD applications. They also support data protection schemes including RAID, erasure coding and data replication.

IDC also expects server shipments to grow to nearly 12 million units per year by 2020. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the recognized server market leader with revenue market share of more than 18 percent, according to market research firm Gartner.

"With today's data-intensive applications, HPE is committed to providing the performance, reliability, security and efficiency needed to address the evolving data storage needs of our customers," said Scott Farrand, Vice President, DCIG – Firmware, Software and Options, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "Through collaboration with technology providers such as Microsemi and their advanced storage controller architecture, HPE is able to create innovative server-based storage capabilities that deliver the scale, speed and resiliency that enable our customers to more rapidly gain new insights from their data, helping them to exceed their business goals."

Microsemi's SmartIOC 2100 and SmartRoC 3100, combined with the company's Unified Smart Storage Stack, boast the following enhancements over its prior generation of storage controllers:

• Common firmware and software stack across all product variants, increasing reliability, improving end customer use experience and reducing qualification efforts
• Density optimized, with variants available in 8-, 16- and 24-port configurations for 12Gbps SAS and 6Gbps SATA
• Two additional dedicated boot drive ports available with the 16- and 24-port variants
• Support for the latest storage media, including both the latest generation of 6 Gbps SATA and 12 Gbps SAS SSDs for performance applications and SAS or SATA Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drives for cold storage applications
• PCIe Gen 3 x8 host interface compliant to base specification 3.1
• Enhanced hardware acceleration for RAID 0/1/10/5/6/50/60
• maxCrypto, third generation data-at-rest controller based encryption engines
• Significant integration of green backup components for footprint and bill of materials cost reduction for RAID applications with a protected write cache

The combination of the company's Unified Smart Storage Stack, SmartRoC and SmartIOC product families and Microsemi's SXP family of SAS expanders provide a complete server solution for storage management and connectivity.

Product Availability
Microsemi's Unified Smart Storage Stack, as well as the fourth generation SmartRoC 3100 and SmartIOC 2100 controller product families, are available in volume production quantities now. For more information, visit https://www.microsemi.com/products/storage/smart-solutions, or contact [email protected]. The Microsemi Adaptec SmartRAID, Microsemi Adaptec SmartHBA and Microsemi Adaptec HBA families of adapters will be available later this year.

About Microsemi's Product Portfolio for Hyperscale Data Center
Microsemi is a premier supplier of innovative semiconductor, board, system, software and services for enterprise and hyperscale data centers, enabling high performance, secure, low power and reliable infrastructure for scalable deployments. Microsemi technologies drive innovation in applications including storage systems, server storage, NVM solutions, Ethernet switching, rack scale architecture, data center interconnect, network timing and power subsystems. Building on a track record of technology leadership, Microsemi's data center infrastructure portfolio is transforming networks that connect, store and move big data, while lowering the total cost of ownership of deploying next generation services.

The portfolio includes high performance NVMe storage controllers, NVRAM drives, SAS/SATA host bus adapters and RAID controllers enabling high capacity storage architectures, high density PCIe switching and firmware for rack scale architectures, PCIe re-drivers, and Ethernet PHYs for intra-rack connectivity. Microsemi's product portfolio also includes clock and power management, IEEE1588 integrated circuits (ICs) and NTP servers for synchronization across the data center, as well as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and system-on-chip (SoC) FPGAs to perform secure system management of servers and storage. For more information, visit http://www.microsemi.com/applications/data-center.

About Microsemi
Microsemi Corporation (NASDAQ: MSCC) offers a comprehensive portfolio of semiconductor and system solutions for aerospace & defense, communications, data center and industrial markets. Products include high-performance and radiation-hardened analog mixed-signal integrated circuits, FPGAs, SoCs and ASICs; power management products; timing and synchronization devices and precise time solutions, setting the world's standard for time; voice processing devices; RF solutions; discrete components; enterprise storage and communication solutions, security technologies and scalable anti-tamper products; Ethernet solutions; Power-over-Ethernet ICs and midspans; as well as custom design capabilities and services. Microsemi is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, and has approximately 4,800 employees globally. Learn more at www.microsemi.com.

Microsemi and the Microsemi logo are registered trademarks or service marks of Microsemi Corporation and/or its affiliates. Third-party trademarks and service marks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Any statements set forth in this news release that are not entirely historical and factual in nature, including without limitation statements related to the production release of a new generation of storage input/output (I/O) controller products, the SmartROC 3100 and SmartIOC 2100, powered by the company's Unified Smart Storage Stack, and its potential effects on future business, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, such factors as rapidly changing technology and product obsolescence, potential cost increases, variations in customer order preferences, weakness or competitive pricing environment of the marketplace, uncertain demand for and acceptance of the company's products, adverse circumstances in any of our end markets, results of in-process or planned development or marketing and promotional campaigns, difficulties foreseeing future demand, potential non-realization of expected orders or non-realization of backlog, product returns, product liability, and other potential unexpected business and economic conditions or adverse changes in current or expected industry conditions, difficulties and costs of protecting patents and other proprietary rights, inventory obsolescence and difficulties regarding customer qualification of products. In addition to these factors and any other factors mentioned elsewhere in this news release, the reader should refer as well to the factors, uncertainties or risks identified in the company's most recent Form 10-K and all subsequent Form 10-Q reports filed by Microsemi with the SEC. Additional risk factors may be identified from time to time in Microsemi's future filings. The forward-looking statements included in this release speak only as of the date hereof, and Microsemi does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

SOURCE Microsemi Corporation

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