San Jose, CA - August 28, 2001 -- The DAFS Collaborative announced today that it will demonstrate its new high-performance, storage networking protocol running for the first time over an InfiniBand fabric at the Intel Developer Forum, Fall 2001 in San Jose.

The Direct Access File System (DAFS) protocol is a high-performance file access protocol designed specifically to use InfiniBand architecture as a standard memory-to-memory interconnect between application servers and shared file storage. DAFS promises to improve the performance and reliability of Internet and enterprise applications in data center environments. The DAFS Collaborative is a group of more than eighty companies that organized last year for the sole purpose of creating this new file-sharing protocol.

The DAFS/InfiniBand architecture demonstration uses technology from Intel, Network Appliance and QLogic, and features a server running Windows 2000 and DAFS client software, accessing files stored on a Network Appliance™ filer over an InfiniBand link. The DAFS client software was built using the DAFS software developer's kit available from the DAFS Collaborative website (www.dafscollaborative.org).

In June, DAFS Collaborative member companies showed demonstrations of data center applications such as IBM DB2 and Oracle 9i using DAFS for high-performance file access over Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Emulex's cLAN. In each demonstration, no changes were required to the basic application in order to take advantage of the high-performance file I/O capabilities of DAFS. With DAFS now running over InfiniBand fabrics, these applications will soon be able to take full advantage of the performance and scalability of the InfiniBand architecture.

"The combination of DAFS and the InfiniBand architecture promises to greatly improve the performance, flexibility and reliability of data center applications," said Jim Pappas, co-chair of the DAFS Collaborative and director of initiative marketing for Intel's Enterprise Platform Group. "These demonstrations show the rapid progress the industry is making toward delivering on this promise. We are looking forward to seeing multiple waves of systems using DAFS and the InfiniBand architecture in the next year."

"DAFS is a perfect fit for the InfiniBand architecture," said David Dale, co-chair of the DAFS Collaborative, and industry evangelist for Network Appliance. "We expect DAFS and the InfiniBand architecture to be important foundation technologies that will enable a new generation of high-performance, highly-scalable, high-density data centers."

The DAFS protocol is specifically designed to take advantage of standard memory-to-memory interconnect technologies such as InfiniBand architecture in clustered data center environments. DAFS enables applications to access network interface hardware without operating system intervention, and carry out bulk data transfers directly to or from application buffers with minimal CPU overhead. The result is a significant increase in application server CPU cycles available for application processing, together with high-performance, low-latency shared file access between application servers and storage systems. DAFS is expected to be a key enabling technology for a new generation of high-performance, highly scalable, high-density data centers.

About The DAFS Collaborative

The DAFS Collaborative was formed by Network Appliance, Intel, and other leading systems, storage and networking vendors, with the goal of making the DAFS protocol available to the industry. Today, more than 80 companies are contributing members of the DAFS Collaborative. For more information visit www.DAFScollaborative.org.