[November 7, 2001]

JNI, Mellanox Partner For InfiniBand Connectivity

JNI Corporation and Mellanox Technologies, Ltd announced a strategic partnership to jointly develop host channel adapters (HCAs) and advanced technologies for the InfiniBand Architecture standard. JNI and Mellanox will collaborate in a variety of areas including product development, interoperability, and marketing initiatives to advance the adoption of open InfiniBand connectivity products and solutions in enterprise data centers for server cluster and storage environments.

"We partnered with JNI because they are the leader in manufacturing superior quality connectivity products for the enterprise data center," said Eyal Waldman, president and CEO of Mellanox Technologies. "JNI's experience in developing leading product technologies, it's knowledge of supporting products on multiple operating systems, and the broad deployment of its products in the enterprise data center makes JNI an ideal choice for delivering InfiniBand HCAs. Our partnership will help InfiniBand take root and grow by offering products with superior reliability, quality and interoperability, which JNI has been delivering for years with their fiber channel products."

"Mellanox is the best partner we could have in the development of our new InfiniBand products for the enterprise data center," said Neal Waddington, president and CEO of JNI Corporation. "They are the technology and time-to-market leader in InfiniBand semiconductors, as we have been a technology leader with fiber channel products. Together we can be first to market with a variety of InfiniBand products and technologies for the data center that offer high availability, high reliability and highly scalable solutions."

"JNI is an established market leader in fiber channel HBA's, and the partnership with early InfiniBand leader Mellanox makes for very interesting potential," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst for the independent research firm, The Enterprise Storage Group. "We think that all the interconnect technologies will meld over time, so having these two begin the fiber to InfiniBand efforts early is good for the industry."

"This collaboration marks a new phase in JNI's growth as a company. At one time JNI was a pure fiber channel company focused solely on storage networking. Today we are expanding that singular vision to include InfiniBand connectivity products that enable server clustering and bridging server clusters to fiber channel-attached storage," Waddington said. "With InfiniBand, JNI and Mellanox hope to lead a movement toward server area networking in much the same way fiber channel and JNI led the movement to storage area networking. JNI will now create enterprise-quality products that enable the scaling of data center resources of not simply storage but servers as well."

The first products from this collaboration are the JNI InfiniStar IBP-4x02, a dual-port 10 Gb PCI-to-InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter (HCA) Module, and the InfiniStar IBP-1x02, a dual-port 2.5 Gb PCI-to-InfiniBand HCA Module. Both products combine the Mellanox InfiniBridge 10 Gb InfiniBand HCA with JNI's driver software technology and experience in developing and manufacturing host bus adapters for enterprise servers in multiple operating system environments.

JNI and Mellanox have outlined a number of activities and broad areas of cooperation for their strategic partnership, including:

• Joint Product Development: The two companies will jointly develop InfiniBand-based HCAs and future products that improve integration, interoperability and end-to-end connectivity in InfiniBand and fiber channel environments;
• Joint Marketing Efforts: JNI and Mellanox will conduct joint benchmark studies, work together to target key vertical markets, and develop joint programs targeting key OEM and channel relationships as well as joint marketing programs such as trade shows and exhibits;
• Interoperability: The two firms will develop interoperability testing programs, especially in the area of heterogeneous server area networks and multiple OS support; enhanced cross-training of support, field application engineering and sales teams.

This is the first joint collaboration between JNI and Mellanox.

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