3ware
Encyclopedia
3ware was founded in February 1997 by Mitch Altman
, J. Peter Herz and Jim MacDonald. In April 2006, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation
(AMCC) acquired 3ware for $150 million in cash and became a AMCC product line brand (manufacturing RAID controllers for Serial Attached SCSI
, Serial ATA
, and Parallel ATA
devices). 3ware (also referred to as "AMCC Storage") was a product brand name of AMCC storage offering, and the product line was managed by Russell Johnson.
AMCC / 3ware's initial business proposition was to enable low-cost desktop disk drives to be used in applications that were traditionally based on SCSI disk drives. In 1997 the cost per byte of SCSI disk drives carried a 2x premium over ATA disk drives. Rather than converging, price premium for SCSI disk drives actually grew to over 5x by 2002. This was not because SCSI drives became more expensive, rather both SCSI and ATA per byte disk drive prices dropped, but ATA drives were riding a much steeper price and performance ramp.
AMCC / 3ware's differentiation from competitive offerings was its own proprietary I/O processor, trademarked as StorSwitch. The technology 3ware applied to scale performance was well known in the networking world: packet switching. AMCC / 3ware developed a high performance switching architecture that allowed all disk drives connected to a 3ware RAID controller to deliver data with full bandwidth in parallel. The combination of high streaming performance with very low cost per byte data storage was compelling in many applications.
Prior to the acquisition by AMCC, 3ware marketed its products under the brand name "Escalade." Following the acquisition, AMCC used the brand "3ware" for its 7006/7506 (Parallel ATA), 8006/9500S/9550SX(U)/9650SE (Serial ATA) and 9690SA (Serial Attached SCSI) families of RAID controllers.
On 28 April 2010 LSI Corporation
bought the 3ware RAID adapter business of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation
Mitch Altman
Mitch Altman is a San Francisco-based hacker and inventor, best known for co-founding 3ware , his pioneering work in Virtual Reality at VPL Research and inventing TV-B-Gone. He is also President and CTO of Cornfield Electronics.-Early life and education:Altman grew up in Rogers Park, Chicago,...
, J. Peter Herz and Jim MacDonald. In April 2006, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation
Applied Micro Circuits Corporation
Applied Micro Circuits Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company designing network and embedded Power Architecture , and server processor ARM , optical transport and storage solutions...
(AMCC) acquired 3ware for $150 million in cash and became a AMCC product line brand (manufacturing RAID controllers for Serial Attached SCSI
Serial Attached SCSI
Serial Attached SCSI is a computer bus used to move data to and from computer storage devices such as hard drives and tape drives. SAS depends on a point-to-point serial protocol that replaces the parallel SCSI bus technology that first appeared in the mid 1980s in data centers and workstations,...
, Serial ATA
Serial ATA
Serial ATA is a computer bus interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives...
, and Parallel ATA
AT Attachment
Parallel ATA , originally ATA, is an interface standard for the connection of storage devices such as hard disks, solid-state drives, floppy drives, and optical disc drives in computers. The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee...
devices). 3ware (also referred to as "AMCC Storage") was a product brand name of AMCC storage offering, and the product line was managed by Russell Johnson.
AMCC / 3ware's initial business proposition was to enable low-cost desktop disk drives to be used in applications that were traditionally based on SCSI disk drives. In 1997 the cost per byte of SCSI disk drives carried a 2x premium over ATA disk drives. Rather than converging, price premium for SCSI disk drives actually grew to over 5x by 2002. This was not because SCSI drives became more expensive, rather both SCSI and ATA per byte disk drive prices dropped, but ATA drives were riding a much steeper price and performance ramp.
AMCC / 3ware's differentiation from competitive offerings was its own proprietary I/O processor, trademarked as StorSwitch. The technology 3ware applied to scale performance was well known in the networking world: packet switching. AMCC / 3ware developed a high performance switching architecture that allowed all disk drives connected to a 3ware RAID controller to deliver data with full bandwidth in parallel. The combination of high streaming performance with very low cost per byte data storage was compelling in many applications.
Prior to the acquisition by AMCC, 3ware marketed its products under the brand name "Escalade." Following the acquisition, AMCC used the brand "3ware" for its 7006/7506 (Parallel ATA), 8006/9500S/9550SX(U)/9650SE (Serial ATA) and 9690SA (Serial Attached SCSI) families of RAID controllers.
On 28 April 2010 LSI Corporation
LSI Corporation
LSI Corporation is an electronics company based in Milpitas, California that designs semiconductors and software that accelerate storage and networking in datacenters and mobile networks.-History:...
bought the 3ware RAID adapter business of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation