Pacific Digital's Talon Controller and Western Digital's WD Raptor(TM) 10,000 RPM SATA Drives Set Performance Speed Record for SATA Queuing Available Now, Groundbreaking TCQ Performance of Talon Provides Cost-effective Alternative to SCSI IRVINE, Calif., June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Pacific Digital Corp. has announced outstanding benchmark results using Western Digital's WD Raptor(TM) enterprise-class 10,000 RPM Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives with Pacific Digital's new Talon(TM) controller. Used in workstation and server platforms, the combination of Pacific Digital Talon and WD Raptor hard drives outperforms many 10,000 and 15,000 RPM SCSI drives. Using the industry standard IOMeter benchmark, the performance boost is 1.5 times the throughput of more expensive 10,000 RPM U160 SCSI configurations. The performance of SATA drives increased dramatically with the introduction of a key performance-enhancing feature, tagged command queuing (TCQ), the overlapped and queued command set. Western Digital's WD Raptor 74 GB hard drives are the first 10,000 RPM drives commercially available implementing TCQ. Designed to enhance TCQ performance, Pacific Digital's Talon controller increases the throughput and data integrity of systems that utilize WD Raptor hard drives and dramatically improves system-level price/performance ratio. This translates into higher performance for high-end system builders, integrators and end users upgrading or installing new SATA devices. Talon's automatic DMA (ADMA) technology excels in systems that manage many outstanding disk I/O tasks, making it ideal for high performance platforms. Talon provides relief to the system CPU handling these tasks, effectively outperforming SCSI host adapters. Using ADMA command chaining, the Talon host controller offloads host-interrupt processing, improves bus utilization, and enhances data transfer rates when used with WD Raptor hard drives. Designed to excel in demanding server and workstation environments, as well as emerging gaming applications, Talon provides a versatile, high-performance storage component. Talon offers "zero lag" in high-performance gaming environments. "With its zero lag TCQ, Talon and WD Raptor -- in a RAID 0 configuration -- creates a huge pick up in map load times with zero choke in high performance multi-user game server environments," notes Jay Roberts, CEO of Art of War Central, a leader in hosting game servers. "Now gaming servers desiring the best performance no longer have to pay for overly expensive Ultra SCSI to have the best system response." "The ability to deliver SCSI-level performance at SATA price points makes the combination of Talon with WD Raptor 10,000 RPM drives an attractive alternative for system builders," said Robert Horton, Pacific Digital marketing vice president. "High performance platforms can now employ Pacific Digital Talon's groundbreaking TCQ technology in conjunction with Western Digital's high performance WD Raptor hard drives to provide enterprise-class SATA solutions." "With Talon's TCQ support of WD Raptor hard drives, Western Digital and Pacific Digital are providing high performance that rivals SCSI solutions at cost-effective SATA price points," said Hubbert Smith, director of marketing for Western Digital. "WD Raptor has an enterprise-class mechanical platform and is the first and only TCQ-enabled SATA drive to spin at 10,000 RPM. The combination with Pacific Digital's Talon provides the fastest hard drive/controller solution available, regardless of interface." About WD Raptor WD Raptor 74 GB hard drives have been tested and verified compatible by Western Digital's FITLab(TM) and Pacific Digital. WD Raptor drives are designed to deliver enterprise-class specifications with 1.2 million hours MTTF (Mean Time To Failure), 10,000 RPM, 4.5 milliseconds (ms) average seek time, and a five-year warranty. Combined with a SATA interface, the enterprise-class mechanical and electronics platform of WD Raptor hard drives is designed to meet the 24x7 demands of the enterprise environment. WD Raptor 74 GB drives offer performance-boosting Ultra/150 Command Queuing (Ultra/150 CQ) technology, as well as Rotary Accelerometer Feed Forward (RAFF) technology to maintain hard drive performance in high vibration environments through adaptive compensation of the servo system. WD Raptor 74 GB hard drives utilize Fluid Dynamic Bearings (FDB) to reduce noise and increase long-term reliability. Additional information about WD Raptor may be found on the Web at http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=65. About Talon(TM) Talon is Pacific Digital Corporation's industry-leading SATA controller implementation that uses a combination of command-chaining and auto-polling techniques to manage SATA hard drives that implement TCQ. These techniques ease the CPU overhead and improve system performance. TCQ significantly impacts networking and server application fields, allowing servers and RAID array systems to sustain much higher data rates than existing non-TCQ SATA controllers. Over and above faster data rates, these techniques provide the real performance boost required for today's fast SATA hard disk drives. Talon's groundbreaking use of the unique command chaining and auto polling techniques lowers bus utilization for data transfers while simultaneously lowering interrupt usage in order to efficiently use the queuing capabilities built into WD Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA drives. Talon maximizes the ability of WD Raptor hard drives to transfer data while minimizing host wait time to initiate commands. Available now, the 2-Port Talon (U-302244) is available now at an MSRP of $79 with the 4-port model (U-30245) at an MSRP of $99. Talon can be found at Buy.com, NewEgg.com, PC Mall, PC Nation, Dartek, Amazon.com and other dealers listed on the Pacific Digital Web site. About Pacific Digital Pacific Digital Corporation, established in 1996, is a leading supplier of storage and multimedia solutions. Its Advanced Product Division's family of ADMA solutions range from IC solutions for motherboard and disk controller OEMs to an array of SATA and Ultra-ATA host adapters. These solutions enable Pacific Digital customers -- system builders and manufacturers of computers featuring mass storage subsystems -- to reduce costs and provide the highest performance to their customers. Pacific Digital's Consumer Product Division provides complete solutions with a focus on DVD and CD-ReWritable optical technology and distributes to resellers via Ingram Micro and D&H, and direct to consumers through Staples, OfficeMax, Sam's Club, Fry's Electronics, DataVision, Dell, HardDrive.com and other fine resellers. For more information about Pacific Digital, Corp., visit our website at http://www.pacificdigital.com/ Pacific Digital(R) is a registered trademark, and Talon(TM), Zero Lag(TM) and the stylized Talon claw logo are trademarks of Pacific Digital Corp. Western Digital(R) is a registered trademark and WD Raptor(TM) and FITLab(TM) are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. DATASOURCE: Pacific Digital Corp. CONTACT: Darryl Lloyd, +1-805-499-0562, , for Pacific Digital Corp.; or Robert Horton of Pacific Digital Corp., +1-949-477-5724, Web site: http://www.pacificdigital.com/

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