Press Releases

Catalyst Announces First Integrated Target Emulator

For Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA)

San Jose, CA, February 22, 2005- Catalyst Enterprises, Inc., a leading manufacturer of advanced design verification and test tools for Serial Attached SCSI
(SAS), Serial ATA (SATA), PCI Express, USB 2.0, and other technologies, today announced the addition of target emulation capabilities on its SAS Master™ and SATA Master™ STX Series of SAS/SATA Analyzer/Exerciser protocol test tools.  This new capability, integrated into the existing STX hardware/software suite of analyzer, exerciser, and performance characterization features, enhances the STX Series by providing developers a highly controllable, disk drive emulation capability.   

 “The ability to fully test and characterize SAS and SATA systems, silicon, and devices from every aspect of the various topologies inherent in these technologies, has been a major goal for our development team and an important milestone not only for Catalyst, but for the storage development community at large,” stated Nader Saleh, president of Catalyst Enterprises, Inc.  “We can now provide a single integrated tool, operated under a single application, that can actively emulate SAS and SATA initiators and disk drives, all while simultaneously capturing and analyzing up to four 1.5Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s serial data links. 

 “Design verification and test tools have been instrumental in bringing SAS products to market,” said Harry Mason, President of the SCSI Trade Association (STA) and Director, Industry Marketing for LSI Logic. “Advancements in these tools, such as the STX series from Catalyst, are essential to confidently introducing new SAS-based products, while improving the time it takes to validate implementations using SAS and SATA drives within the same storage subsystems.”

Increased Test Capability for the Storage Development Community

This new capability allows developers working with system or initiator hardware and software environments to attach to a highly-controllable, highly-configurable, simulated disk drive for purposes of characterizing and validating their designs.  The STX provides full control of disk drive identifying characteristics and operational functionality, including the ability to instantly respond to specified commands and events with normal behavior or to respond with various error scenarios.  Such control is nearly impossible with standard disk drives.  Manufacturers of disk drives and controllers will use this new feature to test how systems and initiators interoperate with various disk drive configurations or to recreate disk drive error scenarios.

Providing a Total Solution

The target emulation capability is the latest in a series of powerful feature enhancements to Catalyst’s hardware-based SAS/SATA analyzer/exerciser solution.  The STX Series is an all-in-one development solution for engineering professionals involved in storage architecture design in the rapidly growing SAS and SATA technology markets.  The STX-230 (two-port), STX-430 (four-port), and STX-430IB (wide port) are designed to provide full analysis and emulation coverage for SATA and SAS protocols, including an ability to analyze both protocols simultaneously and at different speeds.   

Availability

The target emulation option is now available with all SATA Master and SAS Master products.   

About Serial ATA

The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) is an independent, non-profit organization developed by and for leading industry companies.  Officially formed in July 2004 by incorporating the previous Serial ATA Working Group, the SATA-IO provides the industry with guidance and support for implementing the SATA specification. The standardized SATA specification replaces a 15 year old technology with a high speed serial bus supporting up to 10 years of expected future.  For more on SATA technologies and the SATA-IO, visit www.sata-io.org.

About Serial Attached SCSI

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is the logical evolution of SCSI, and retains SCSI’s long-established middleware. It combines the proven reliability, scalability and functionality of SCSI with the power and performance of serial technology. It is compatible with Serial ATA’s electrical and physical connection interface, enabling the two technologies to reside side by side in a SAS system.  The SCSI Trade Association promotes the understanding and use of SAS technology and influences the evolution of SAS standards to meet future industry needs. For more on SAS technology and the STA, visit www.scsita.org.

About Catalyst Enterprises, Inc.

Founded in 1992 in San Jose, CA, Catalyst Enterprises manufactures data bus analysis and emulation tools for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), Serial ATA (SATA), PCI Express, USB 2.0, and other data communications protocols. Catalyst’s development tools incorporate a reconfigurable hardware core architecture, which can be updated in the field with software, keeping the tool current with the latest standards and updated feature sets. These flexible hardware tools are powered by protocol-specific software applications, which are made available to customers for the lifetime of the product. Catalyst products are used by companies in the telecommunications, semiconductor, software, consumer electronics, defense, and other industries.  Catalyst can be found on the web at www.getcatalyst.com. 

Catalyst Enterprises, Inc. ● 710 Lakeway Drive, Suite 135 ● Sunnyvale, CA 94085● (408) 365-3846

Solutions for SAS, SATA, PCI Express, PCI, PCI-X, and USB

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