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SIIG, Inc. Now Shipping Serial ATA

(Fremont, California; August 29, 2002) SIIG Inc. is now shipping its first assortment of Serial ATA products to market. Now shipping are SIIG's Serial ATA PCI (SIIG part # SC-SAT212, MSRP $49.99), a high-speed dual channel PCI-to-Serial ATA host adapter, upgrading existing systems to the latest in Serial ATA technology and the Serial ATA-to-UltraATA Adapter (SIIGpart # SC-SATA12, MSRP $39.99), which allows users to utilize existing UltraATA 133/100/66 hard disk drives with the new SerialATA interface.

Upcoming SIIG Serial ATA Products 
SIIG's future Serial ATA products include solutions for a widerange of applications. The Serial ATA RAID PCI (SIIG part# SC-SATR12, MSRP TBA) is also a high-speed dual channel PCI-to-SerialATA host adapter, with the additional capability of RAID (RAID0, 1). 

SIIG will also offer products designed to allow older Parallel ATA and Serial ATA devices to work with one another. The SIIG Serial ATA+UltraATA Combo (SIIG part # SC-SATE12, MSRP$69.99) is a high-speed Serial ATA combo host adapter that supports both Serial ATA and Ultra ATA (parallel ATA) devices. This combo card provides two independent channels and allows the user to connect one Serial ATA and one Ultra ATA device. The SATA+PATA Adapter (SIIG part # SC-SPAT12, MSRP TBA) is a bi-directional converter that allows newer Serial ATA drives to connect with older Ultra ATA controllers and also allows older Ultra ATA drives to connect with newer Serial ATA controllers. 

Later, SIIG will be combining all of the latest in high-speed technology into single adapter cards. The USB 2.0+FireWire+SATACombo (SIIG part # SC-UNS012, MSRP $119.99) will offer a dual channel Serial ATA controller with four Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (3 ext/1int) ports and three 1394 FireWire (2 ext/1 int) ports 
in one card. Also offered will be the USB 2.0+FireWire+SATA+PATACombo (SIIG part # SC-UNSP12, MSRP TBA), which combines a single channel Serial ATA controller, a single channel Ultra ATA, four Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (3 ext/1 int) ports and three 1394 FireWire (2 ext/1 int) ports in one card. 

Improved Performance & Capacity 
Serial ATA is the next generation of ATA technology, replacing the current standard (parallel ATA, also know as Ultra ATA 66/100/133). This next generation offers data transfer speeds of up to 1.5Gb/sec(150MB/sec) and addresses many of the limitations of the current parallel ATA technology (high 5-volt signaling requirement, bulky40-pin/80-wire cable, 18 inch cable length limitation, and an exhaustion of performance upgrade capacity). Serial ATA offers a number of improvements, including: 

- A reduction in voltage (500 millivolts) and pin count (4-pins vs. 26-pin with parallel ATA) 
- Thinner, more flexible cable (easier to route inside the system and improves airflow) 
- Increased cable length (up to 1 meter vs. 18 inches with parallel ATA) 
- Future scalability (future generations already planned at 3.0Gb/sec & 6 Gb/sec) 

In addition, Serial ATA maintains 100% compatibility with today's software, meaning that no changes are necessary in existing operating systems or drivers and is designed to offer the same cost effectiveness as Parallel ATA, offering the highest performance at the lowest cost.