Industry Leaders Outline Future
I/O
(02/12/99, 11:15 a.m. ET)
By Marcia Savage, Computer Reseller News
MONTEREY, Calif. -- An alliance of industry
leaders touted its plans Thursday for a new
I/O specification they said they hope to see
become the standard for next-generation
servers.
At the Future I/O Developers Forum, held here in
Monterey, Calif., Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM,
3Com, and Adaptec outlined directions for the Future
I/O specification they are pushing to dominate Wintel
servers as early as 2001.
In a news conference, alliance executives said they are
hoping to come to an agreement with Intel on a single
specification. Intel is pushing another specification, Next
Generation I/O. Also supporting NGIO are Dell,
Hitachi, NEC, Siemens Information Communication
Network, and Sun Microsystems.
"We clearly expect that to work out," said Tom
Bradicich, director of Netfinity Server Architecture and
Technology for IBM's PC server division.
The server vendors supporting Future I/O have charged
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel is trying to dominate the
specification process. Intel, on the other hand, has
accused the Future I/O group of developing a royalty
scheme.
Bradicich said the Future I/O alliance expects a merger
of the two specifications will occur, and said it would
not be a case in which one side caves into the other.
Future I/O supporters have been talking with Intel, but
some fundamental differences remain, Bradicich and
others in the group said.
Martin Whittaker, R&D manager of HP's enterprise
NetServer line, said the two groups differ on some
technical and business issues. For example, Intel's plan
doesn't provide enough bandwidth, he said. The Future
I/O alliance is committed to open governance of the
specification initiative, he added.
Bradicich said a policy of low-cost fees is being
developed. The fees "will be commercially reasonable
and not an inhibitor to any company joining Future I/O,"
he said.
"This is not a royalties game," he added. Common
industry practices protect intellectual property, he said.
During the conference, company executives said Future
I/O will be an open, industry standard drawn on years
of experience in the industry in working with customers,
rather than a standard driven by a single vendor. They
also emphasized the need to provide room for
differentiation.
More than 220 people attended the event, which
continues through Friday. Company executives said 40
companies have signed on as participants in the effort.
The two specifications, which analysts describe as
similar, use channel-switched, fabric-based
architectures based in part on IBM's S/390
architecture. Future I/O will provide 2 gigabytes a
second, 1 GB in each direction.
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