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Pressemitteilung VIA Announces Serial ATA RAID Controller Opening the Door to Mainstream Adoption of the New IDE Interface The VIA VT6420 Controller delivers the benefits of Serial ATA and RAID in a cost effective and easily integrated single chip package. Taipei, Taiwan, 6 March 2003 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today announced the VIA VT6420 Serial ATA RAID Controller, the first controller to feature, SATA, RAID and a Parallel ATA-133 interface in a single chip package. Providing platform providers and system builders with the flexibility to reach multiple market segments and price points, the VIA VT6420 incorporates the very latest in IDE technology and is compatible with hard drives and IDE devices from all leading vendors. The VIA VT6420 features two Serial ATA channels, supporting up to 4 devices, as well as one Parallel ATA channel supporting up to two devices. For even more flexibility, the VIA VT6420 has a SATALITE Interface which, when paired with a single Silicon Image Sil3012 external PHY chip, adds 2 more SATA channels at very low cost. The VIA VT6420 will be demonstrated at the upcoming CeBIT 2003 in Hannover, Germany. "The combination of the new ultra fast dual channel Serial ATA interface at 150MB/s, the flexibility of multi level RAID configurations and backwards compatibility with Parallel ATA, delivers a whole new value proposition to the marketplace," commented Richard Brown, Director of Marketing at VIA Technologies, Inc. "We believe the VT6420 will propel Serial ATA toward mainstream market penetration in Q4 2003." "Maxtor believes that Serial ATA hard drives and products such as these are paving the way for mainstream adoption of Serial ATA and will help ease the integration of Serial ATA into storage solutions designed for performance-oriented and bulk storage applications such as video editing and near-line storage," said Robert Wise, director of product marketing, Maxtor Corporation. "We look forward to continuing our relationship with VIA and applaud their effort to help accelerate the adoption of SATA into a broad variety of applications." About the VIA VT6420 Serial ATA RAID Controller The VIA VT6420, with dual channel Serial ATA for up to four devices, offers a genuine 150MB/s data transfer rate between storage devices and CPU, giving a significant performance improvement in data intensive and bulk storage applications. The Serial ATA interface also offers much simpler and more practical cabling and installation that will help system builders improve airflow within the system chassis. The VIA VT6420 also boasts the unique SATALITE interface that leverages the Silicon Image Sil3012 external PHY chip to add an additional two Serial ATA Channels. In addition to Serial ATA, the VIA VT6420 provides multi level RAID support including RAID level 0 for maximum performance, RAID Level 1 for maximum security, RAID level 0+1 and JBOD. To ensure backwards compatibility the VT6420 also integrates a single channel parallel ATA-133 controller, eliminating the need for adaptors. The VIA VT6420 is compatible with a complete range of Intel, AMD and VIA based processing platforms, Microsoft Windows® 9X/ME/NT4/2K/XP and major Linux based Operating Systems. A single chip solution with a small 15mm square BGA package, the VIA VT6240 is sampling now and will start volume shipment in April. For further information on the VIA VT6420, please see the VIA website at: http://www.via.com.tw/en/Products/vt6420.jsp.