From: rjones@pa.dec.com (Russ Jones)
Newsgroups: biz.dec
Subject: DECnews/Digital Introduces SCSI-2 Solid State Disks
Date: 17 Nov 92 22:07:15 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

||||||  DECnews for Press and Analyst  ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
                                              Digital Equipment Corporation
                                          Maynard, Massachusetts 01754-2571
Editorial contact:

Madeline Flynn
OEM Solid State Disk Products
(508) 841-3399
(508) 841-3738 (Fax)


                  DIGITAL INTRODUCES LOWEST-PRICED,
               LIGHTNING-FAST SCSI-2 SOLID STATE DISKS


           ... New Products Mark Digital's entry into the
                  OEM Solid State Disk Business ...


SHREWSBURY, MA -- November 16, 1992 -- Digital Equipment Corporation 
today announced the ESP500 family of SCSI-2 Solid State Disks (SSDs) 
for the OEM market at a price point of $13.5 K for evaluation units, 
well below comparable industry offerings. Volume pricing on the 
ESP500 family of SCSI-2 Solid State Disks will be even more 
aggressive making this the best price/performance SSD on the market.  
With a standard 5 1/4-inch form factor, generous storage capacity, 
and unparalleled low price, Digital is putting the tremendous speed 
of SSD technology within reach of most distributed computing 
environments.

     The announcement marks Digital's first open systems venture in 
the SSD category, and its first step in building an SSD OEM 
business.  According to Tom Frederick, who oversees Digital's new 
OEM Solid State Disk Business Unit, "The ESP500 leverages Digital's 
experience and success with SSD, while positioning the company to 
pursue a much greater volume of business than exists within its own 
base.  We see this as an important complementary product in 
Digital's overall OEM mass storage product portfolio."

     "If the increasing number of I/O-bound applications is any 
indication, the market is indeed ripe for a low-cost SSD," added 
Frederick.  While magnetic disk access speeds have not nearly kept 
pace with advances in CPU speed, SSD devices use solid state DRAMs 
to achieve a high rate of I/O requests per second and extrememly 
fast data access, as much as 100 times faster than magnetic disk.  
The ESP500, for example, offers an access time of 0.25 ms and very 
high throughput, making it an ideal storage medium for 
frequently-accessed, critical applications or response-time critical 
data.

     Until recently, practical barriers such as odd form factors, 
proprietary bus architectures, high cost, and unique software 
requirements have prevented the widespread deployment of SSDs. "With 
the introduction of affordable offerings like the ESP500 SSDs, which 
fit into standard storage slots and use the same SCSI-2 commands as 
magnetic disks, those barriers are effectively removed for the 
broader computing community," Frederick says.

     Leading market research firms concur.  In November, 1991, 
Dataquest predicted that "SSD-type products may be at the edge of a 
trend that could replace hard disk drives as a secondary storage 
device in high performance systems." In April,1992 the Gartner Group 
suggested "it is time to re-evaluate SSD's potential to improve both 
direct access storage devices and CPU utilization."

     According to Frederick, Digital has documented immediate 
performance improvements and very fast device payback when 
applications are redeployed on SSD.  Performance has improved 
approximately 40 percent across a broad cross-section of 
manufacturing, order processing, banking, EDI, telecommunications, 
and CAD applications.

Transaction oriented applications such as financial trading have 
improved by as much as 10 times.  The improvements were achieved 
simply by installing the device, with minimal tuning and no 
application recoding.

     Digital's ESP500 SCSI-2 solid state disk family includes the 
Model ESP510 with 107 MB capacity and an integrated Data Retention 
System for non-volatile data storage and the ESP530 with 267MB of 
capacity.  The Data Retention System within the ESP510 model is 
integrated into the standard 5.25-inch package to make a single, 
self-contained device.  Both models incorporate a sophisticated Reed 
Solomon error correction scheme that transparently corrects bad bits 
of data.  

     Internal error checking monitors the devices' operation, while 
bad blocks of data are automatically detected and replaced without 
interrupting system operation.

     Evaluation units are available in Q1, 1993.  Volume shipments 
of the ESP500 commence in Q3, 1993.

     Digital Equipment Corporation, headquartered in Maynard, 
Massachusetts, is the leading worldwide supplier of networked 
computer systems, software and services.  Digital pioneered and 
leads the industry in interactive, distributed and multivendor 
computing.  Digital and its business partners deliver the power to 
use the best integrated solutions - from desktop to data center - 
in open information environments.

                                ####

Note to Editors:   Digital and the DIGITAL logo are trademarks of 
                   Digital Equipment Corporation.
         
CORP/93/868
============================================================================
DECnews for Press and Analyst is sent as a courtesy to members of the press,
analyst and consulting community.  For subscription information please 
contact:
  Russ Jones, UNIX Marketing
  Digital Equipment Corporation
  Voice: 415-617-3597   FAX: 415-617-3572   Internet: rjones@pa.dec.com
============================================================================
-- 
Russ Jones
UNIX Marketing
Digital Equipment Corporation, Palo Alto, CA
All opinions expressed are mine, and not necessarily those of my employer
Newsgroups: biz.comp.software