Press Releases

Catalyst Announces SAS Zoning Support

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 17, 2005

Contact:  Chuck Trefts
Catalyst Enterprises, Inc.
(408) 365-3846 x116
info@getcatalyst.com

New Analyzer Capabilities Support SAS Topology Security Enhancements

San Jose, CA, October 17, 2005- Catalyst Enterprises, Inc., a leading manufacturer of advanced design
verification and test tools for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), Advanced Serial ATA (SATA), PCI Express™,
USB 2.0, and other technologies, today announced support for SAS Zoning on its STX Master™ Series of
SAS protocol analyzers. These new capabilities provide developers various display, decode, and
configuration enhancements needed to fully characterize SAS systems which employ zoning.

“Catalyst has been working closely with industry leaders involved in the definition of specification
requirements for zoning as well as the development of new products that support this feature,” stated Paul
Mutschler, director of storage products, Catalyst Enterprises, Inc. “This feature addition directly addresses
a leading-edge standards enhancement and assists our customers in meeting delivery schedules for
products designed to implement such enhancements.”

“The delivery of this feature addition on the Catalyst STX system served a key role in expediting the design
and validation processes of our SAS Expanders that support SAS zoning,” stated Peter Wong, Director,
Strategic Marketing, PMC-Sierra. “Test tools that evolve quickly to meet the demands of new standards
requirements enable us to quickly and confidently introduce new products to market.”

SAS Zoning Provides Access Control and Security Mechanisms

In May 2005, industry leaders submitted the SAS Zoning Proposal to the ANSI INCITS T10 committee.
The T10 committee authorized formation of a working group, tasked to complete the Zoning specification
for the upcoming SAS-2 standard. SAS Zoning, an access control mechanism, provides for segregation of
traffic within a SAS topology, allowing initiator and target device to see only the portions of the topology for
which they have been assigned permissions. Permissions are assigned by way of a permission table.
Zoning-capable expander devices interoperate in order to fully define this table and to control the resulting
zone group memberships. SAS Zoning supports up to 128 separately zoned groups within a topology.

Providing a Total Solution

Support for zoning is the latest in a series of powerful feature enhancements to Catalyst’s hardware-based
SAS/SATA analyzer/emulator solution. The STX Master 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

Zoning support is available now as a standard feature on Catalyst STX Series analyzer/emulator systems.
Existing customers may download the latest version of the STX application from www.getcatalyst.com
software in order to update their STX systems to include this feature.

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.

About PMC-Sierra’s Storage Products

PMC-Sierra offers cost-optimized products featuring best-in-class signal integrity, monitoring and advanced
diagnostics for increased system performance, management and reliability. The company provides 1G, 2G
and 4G Fibre Channel and 3G Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial Attached ATA (SATA) disk array and
system interconnect products for SAN/NAS storage and switch fabric applications. For more information,
visit www.pmc-sierra.com/storage.

About PMC-Sierra

PMC-Sierra™ is a leading provider of high-speed broadband communications semiconductors, storage
semiconductors and microprocessors. The company offers worldwide technical and sales support through
its network of offices in North America, Europe and Asia. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ
Stock Market under the PMCS symbol and is included in the S&P 500 Index. For more information, visit
www.pmc-sierra.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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