3Leaf Systems Transforms the x86 Server Market with New Dynamic Data Center Server

Ground-Breaking ASIC and Software Simplify Deployment, Enable Agile Scalable
Systems, Dramatically Reduce CapEx and OpEx
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
3Leaf Systems, an innovator of ASIC and software technologies that enable the
dynamic data center, today announced the general availability of its disruptive
new Dynamic Data Center Server (DDC-Server) for AMD Opteron processors.
DDC-Server features the 3Leaf Systems DDC-ASIC combined with DDC-Software to
take industry-standard technologies to new markets, meeting the agility and
scalability requirements of today`s enterprises. Until now, such capabilities
required expensive proprietary systems that could not take advantage of the
combined innovation of the industry.

3Leaf Systems products include ASICs that expose substantial value for
customers, the software needed to unlock and deliver that value, and complete
OEM-ready systems. In addition, certain fixed configurations of the company's
server products are available for purchase by end-user customers. A DDC-Server
configured with a massive 1TB of shared memory, 192 cores of AMD Istanbul
processors at 2.8 GHz, and 8TB of storage, all connected via an InfiniBand
switch and complete with cables, Linux OS, and DDC-Pool software lists for
$250,000. A DDC-Server with 256GB of shared memory, 96 cores of AMD Istanbul
processors at 2.4 GHz, 4TB of storage with an InfiniBand switch, cables, Linux
OS, and DDC-Pool software is listed at $99,000. Shipments begin in December
2009.

"The `distributed-and-shared` nature of 3Leaf Systems technology transforms an
enterprise datacenter into an agile provider of servers that dynamically re-size
to the workload while using industry standard x86 servers," said Bob Quinn,
founder, chairman and CTO of 3Leaf Systems. "This reduces OpEx by minimizing
operating system administration, power and cooling, and reduces CapEx by using
cost-optimized (two socket) servers."

The unique hardware-approach taken by 3Leaf Systems minimizes communication
latency, maximizes data bandwidth, and provides the basic instrumentation and
control structure for data center agility. These in turn improve workload and
capacity optimization. For example, one or more instances of an OS can span many
servers - or use fractions of servers - to adapt to changing needs or handle
spikes in application traffic.

"What 3Leaf Systems is doing is a phenomenal leap forward for data center
infrastructure," said Steve Yatko, CTO and General Partner at Cresting Wave and
formerly the head of global IT Research and Development at Credit Suisse. "With
the kind of system agility and massive shared memory enabled by 3Leaf Systems
technologies, new kinds of applications and business models are now possible for
enterprise IT as well as cloud service providers. At the same time, OEMs can now
increase their return on R&D by using or customizing 3Leaf Systems
technologies."

Dynamic Data Center Server

The OEM-ready DDC-Server features up to 192 cores and 1TB of shared memory. It
uses industry standard components such as x86 CPUs, Linux OS, 10GbE or
InfiniBand interconnect, and SSD, FC, or SATA storage. The DDC-Server provides
hardware partitioning for fault isolation at the board/blade level and logical
fault isolation so one instance of an OS does not bring down other instances.
Using industry standard software, it can offer High-Availability failover across
two or more instances of an OS within or across server racks.

Dynamic Data Center ASIC

The heart of 3Leaf Systems technologies is the DDC-ASIC. Designed to crunch
through complex coherency protocols at lightning speed, the DDC-ASIC enables
distributed cache coherency among all system cores while creating the basic
control structure needed for high system agility. The DDC-ASIC chip is available
now for AMD Opteron processors supporting the AMD HyperTransport interconnect
and up to 1TB of main memory across up to 16 nodes targeting the Shanghai,
Istanbul, and Magny Cours processors. The next version of this chip will support
32 nodes, up to 64 TB of main memory, and is designed for Intel CPUs, compatible
with the Intel Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) 1.1.

Dynamic Data Center Software

With the DDC-Software, customers can Pool, Share, and Flex industry-standard
resources in a shared contiguous manner.

* DDC-Pool: allows customers to coalesce multiple x86 boxes or blades into a
single larger contiguous system, and supports the static reconfiguration of an
OS across whole servers or blades in a compute cluster upon re-boot.
* DDC-Share:provides a greater degree of flexibility, allowing the allocation of
resources down to the core level, allowing instances of an OS to run across
whole or parts of servers or blades, with static reconfiguration of the OS upon
re-boot.
* DDC-Flex: provides run-time reconfiguration of OS images across any portion of
a compute cluster. An OS image can expand or shrink in terms of CPU, memory, and
I/O resources without a reboot. DDC-Flex is expected for general availability in
2010.

Setting x86 Performance Standard

In August 2009, 3Leaf Systems provided a glimpse of the power of industry
standard x86 processors when combined with 3Leaf Systems technologies, breaking
the previous SPECjbb2005 performance record of x86-based systems by a factor of
two and setting a new world record. Closely followed by many customers in the
enterprise and the industry`s leading OEMs, SPECjbb 2005 is the Standard
Performance Evaluation Corporation`s (SPEC) most current benchmark for eCommerce
transaction processing and evaluates the performance of server-side Java
applications. The 3Leaf Systems enabled x86 system used for the SPECjbb 2005
test featured 128 cores and 0.5TB of memory. It achieved 5,534,233 Business
Operations per Second (BOPS). The next best performance reported by an x86-based
system is that of the NEC Express5800/A116 system, which achieved 2,150,260
BOPS.

"As organizations evolve their data center infrastructures, we will see a day
when all processing takes place on a pool of CPUs which access a pool of memory
and all storage will be in a pool of storage," said David G. Hill, Principal,
Mesabi Group LLC. "3Leaf Systems technology is uniquely positioned to support
this convergence amongst compute, storage, and networking resources, and will
have broad applicability beyond its current focus on x86 server environments."

About 3Leaf Systems

3Leaf Systems develops innovative ASIC/software technologies that enable the
Dynamic Data Center. 3Leaf Systems allows customers to merge previously separate
CPU, I/O and memory resources from multiple x86-based systems into one large
computing "fabric" so these resources can be instantly delivered to demanding
applications, just-in-time, as needed. By leveraging cost-optimized components
to build performance-optimized systems, 3Leaf Systems solutions make data center
infrastructure more agile and flexible while dramatically reducing capital and
operational costs. A privately held company based in Santa Clara, Calif.,
investors in 3Leaf Systems include Alloy Ventures, Enterprise Partners, Intel
Capital, LSI and Storm Ventures. For more information, visit
www.3leafsystems.com or call 408-572-5900.

Loughlin/Michaels Group
Roger Fortier, 408-738-9141
roger@lmgpr.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009