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Comtech AHA Announces First-Ever GZIP Compression and Decompression Chip for Networking and Data Storage Environments

Posted on: Tuesday, 30 October 2007, 09:00 CDT

Comtech AHA Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (NASDAQ:CMTL) that develops technology for the communications, networking, and data storage markets, today announced the introduction of the first-ever GZIP compression and decompression integrated circuit (IC), which offers up to 2.5 Gbits/sec throughput via hardware, while achieving compression ratios comparable to high effort (level 9) GZIP software.

Comtech AHA's GZIP IC, the AHA3610, increases data transfer rates by up to four times and reduces storage requirements by that same amount in applications such as storage area networks, Web servers, Web accelerators and Web traffic appliances, including load balancers, firewall VPN servers and integrated routers/switches. These compression and decompression capabilities provide companies with significant speed and capacity enhancements, allowing them to optimize network performance and dramatically lower costs.

"Comtech AHA is pleased to have achieved such a significant milestone with the introduction of the first GZIP compression-capable component to the market," stated Bill Thomson, president, Comtech AHA. "By implementing our GZIP hardware solutions, our customers can overcome the issues encountered with software and significantly improve the performance of their system with both high compression ratio performance and throughput."

Comtech's AHA3610 implements the open standard GZIP format (deflate compression and decompression algorithm). Deflate is the ideal compression algorithm for networking and storage networks since compatible software is readily available on client machines and is included in Internet browser software. Software compression is inadequate for many systems either because the throughput is too slow or the CPU loading is too high.

"Data compression technology is a new facet to the semiconductor industry, but one that should continue to grow over time as companies like Comtech AHA bring capable ICs to market," said Susie Inouye president and research director at Databeans. "The fact that AHA's compression IC is an open-standard algorithm, requiring no software license, makes it compatible with competing solutions, while offering the best compression ratio to processor utilization efficiency available."

Comtech's AHA3610 is the latest addition to its line of Lossless Data Compression ICs using a compression technique that decompresses data back to its original form without any loss of information. This new GZIP IC increases throughput and performance by reducing file size, memory requirements, transmission time and link requirements. The chip can provide low latency, high throughput and high compression ratios for applications such as servers, blade servers, storage appliances, point-to-point network appliances, load balancers and application server appliances.

Pricing and Availability

Prototypes of the AHA3610 are available to beta customers now and production quantities will be available in January of 2008. Pricing for the AHA3610 is $55 in 10K volumes.

More information may be obtained by contacting Comtech AHA by telephone 208-892-5600 or via e-mail sales@aha.com.

About Comtech AHA

Comtech AHA Corporation develops and markets application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), boards, and intellectual property core technology for communications systems architects worldwide. Comtech AHA provides flexible, cost-effective solutions for today's growing bandwidth and reliability challenges. Located in Moscow, Idaho, Comtech AHA has been providing leading edge Forward Error Correction and Lossless Data Compression technology for more than a decade and offers a variety of standard and custom IC solutions for the data communications industry. Comtech AHA Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comtech Telecommunications Corp. (NASDAQ:CMTL). For more information, please visit www.aha.com.

Certain information in this press release contains statements that are forward-looking in nature and involve certain significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from such forward-looking information. Comtech Telecommunications Corp.'s Securities and Exchange Commission filings identify many such risks and uncertainties. Any forward-looking information in this press release is qualified in its entirety by the risks and uncertainties described in such Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Source: Business Wire

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