Storage networking host bus adapters (HBAs) Emulex Corporation today announced its new 133Mhz PCI-X-compliant Fibre Channel host bus adapter. The Emulex LightPulse(R) LP9402DC dual channel host bus adapter supports two Gigabit per second (2Gb/s) data rates on both channels, providing up to 800MB/s of link bandwidth capacity for high performance storage area network (SAN) connectivity. PCI-X is a new system bus standard found in emerging Intel processor-based servers that provides up to 1GB/s (1000MB/s) of input/output (I/O) bandwidth, making it ideal, Emulex claims, for Fibre Channel SAN applications.
According to Emulex , its 2Gb/s LP9402DC host bus adapter features dual independent channels, each of which utilize a StrongARM processor, large data buffer, and hardware context switching for high performance even in the most complex switched fabrics. In addition to complete software compatibility with previous generations of Emulex host bus adapters, the LP9402DC is fully backwards compatible with existing 1Gb/s Fibre Channel installations. Each Fibre Channel link is capable of automatically detecting link speed and operating independently at either 1Gb/s or 2Gb/s, providing complete flexibility in supporting either new installations or legacy SANs. Emulex provides a wide range of operating system support, including Windows NT, Windows 2000, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, NetWare, and Linux.