Press Releases

May 09, 2005

STX-230/430 Master Series        

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

New Capabilities Greatly Expand User Control of Emulated Disk Drive and Emulated Initiator Feature Sets

San Jose, CA, May 09, 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 an expanded set of target and initiator emulation capabilities on its SAS Master™ and SATA Master™ STX Series of SAS/SATA Analyzer/Exerciser protocol test tools. These new capabilities, integrated into the existing STX hardware/software suite of analyzer, exerciser, and performance characterization features, greatly enhance the ability to control the precise conditions under which SAS and SATA systems, devices, and silicon can be tested and characterized.


“Catalyst has focused on building storage test and analysis tools that resonate with the needs of the SAS and SATA development communities,” stated Paul Mutschler, Director of Storage Products Division, Catalyst Enterprises, Inc. “Developers know what they need in terms of test and analysis tools to quickly move quality, reliable designs from the lab to the marketplace, and we’ve positioned our storage team to not just anticipate these requirements, but to actively and continually solicit product enhancements from our developer base and install them as useable features on our tools. These latest feature updates are a direct result of customer requests and reflect the level of interaction that our marketing, sales, and engineering teams have had with our customer base.”

“Enhancements such as these from Catalyst help to increase productivity in the design stages and are instrumental in helping to bring quality SAS products to market,” said Harry Mason, President of the SCSI Trade Association (STA) and Director, Industry Marketing for LSI Logic. “Development tools that evolve quickly in response to specification updates and developer requirements are critical in the effort to ensure SAS products meet design performance criteria, specification requirements, and delivery schedules.”

“The enhanced Catalyst emulator will help accelerate the design of Serial ATA initiators, targets, and expanders and ensure that PC and entry-level builders meet their Serial ATA specification, quality, and time-to-market requirements as the industry prepares to roll out powerful 3Gb/s Serial ATA systems,” said Joni Clark, SATA-IO marketing chairwoman and Seagate Technology Serial ATA marketing manager. “Protocol test tools like the Catalyst are crucial to meeting development deadlines and bringing robust Serial ATA systems to market.”


Enhanced Emulation Feature Sets for the Storage Development Community

These new capabilities provide developers working with SAS and SATA hardware and software environments a greatly increased ability to exact precise control over the multitudes of information exchanges that occur between system platforms and devices, and in a SAS environment, those involving expander devices. The STX Series now provides the user with increased capabilities to control device or initiator packet generation and ordering, response timing, low-level error injection, out-of-band (OOB) sequencing and spacing, handshaking characteristics, control of primitive sequences, and other advanced features.




Providing a Total Solution

The STX Master Series is an all-in-one hardware/software development solution designed for engineering professionals involved in storage architecture design in the rapidly growing SAS and SATA technology markets. The STX-230, STX-430, and STX-430IB models are designed to provide simultaneous analysis and initiator/target emulation coverage for SATA and SAS protocols.

Availability

These enhanced capabilities are now available and are included with the target emulation and host/initiator options on 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



###

All trademarks herein are the property of their respective owners.