Comtech AHA Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Comtech Telecommunications Corp. that develops technology for the communications, networking and data storage markets, announced the introduction of its GZIP Data Compression Board (the AHA363-PCle), which allows for the highest GZIP data compression ratios on the market.

The AHA363-PCle allows network transmission and network storage appliance customers to significantly reduce the amount of data that is transferred through or stored within their systems. Along with reducing latency, bandwidth and storage requirements, it also eases the loading of precious resources inside of these appliances by off-loading the data compression task from the core Central Processing Units (CPUs).

The system is based on Comtech AHA’s AHA3610 design - the industry’s first-ever GZIP compression and decompression integrated circuit (IC), which offers up to 2.5 Gbits/sec throughput via hardware, while also giving significant power saving over GZIP software compression.

“With the announcement of this new board, Comtech AHA has further demonstrated its expertise in the GZIP data compression market,” stated Bill Thomson, president, Comtech AHA. “This GZIP Compression Board, coupled with the first-ever GZIP Compression IC, solidifies our leadership position in this growing facet of the semiconductor industry. Because our products are based on open standards and do not require license fees or royalties, they are very compatible with competing solutions while delivering the highest performance level.”

Based on the Open Standard GZIP Data Compression Algorithm, the AHA363-PCle supports full-duplex streaming of up to 5.0 Gbps uncompressed data using an industry standard X4 lane PCI-Express Interface. The system achieves GZIP compression ratios at an average of three to one.

"While data compression technology is a relatively new area in the chip market, we see it as one that has great potential," said Rich Wawrzyniak, senior analyst for ASICs and SoCs with Semico Research Corporation. "With companies like Comtech AHA using an open-standard algorithm to offer significant improvements in speed, power savings and compression ratio over software compression solutions, networking and data storage vendors can realize long-term cost efficiency while providing significantly enhanced performance to customers."

Product Features:

• 3.5:1 Canterbury corpus compression ratio
• Full GZIP algorithm compliance
• x4 PCI Express Interface
• Uses 2 AHA3610 IC’s
• 5.0 Gb/sec uncompressed throughput
• Efficient scatter gather DMA
• Single stream or intermixed streams
• Full duplex operation
• Software drivers and source code: Linux and Windows reference drivers

Pricing and Availability
Prototypes of the AHA363-PCle are available to beta customers now and production quantities will be available in Q2 of 2008. Pricing for the AHA363-PCle is $800 in volumes of 1,000.

Comtech AHA Corporation