Sam, Need help. I thought Iband took PCIs place, what is this 3GIO stuff? People will get confused with wireless stuff with 3G.
Wonder when QLGC will come out with that 4GFC for drives?
Rival Plans Stir Rumors Of Post-PCI Bus War
(04/02/01, 3:06 p.m. ET) By Jerry Ascierto, EE Times
ANAHEIM, Calif.—Will a third-generation I/O technology now being developed by Intel Corp. spur a bus war in the PC industry?
Opinions are divided as Intel (stock: INTC) quickly but quietly works on a spec it will unveil this fall, even as archrival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (stock: AMD) and its partners push the competing HyperTransport technology into the marketplace.
At least one major PC OEM, Compaq Computer Corp. (stock: CPQ), confirmed its involvement in the Intel spec's development—and a hunger for I/O harmony.
"Intel has formed a group in the industry to help get the spec defined, and Compaq is part of that group," said Scott King, manager of the platform-engineering group for the Houston computer maker's home and office access division.
King called the spec, initially dubbed 3GIO, "definitely revolutionary, not evolutionary," underscoring that system OEMs may have to redesign their boxes from the ground up.
"Certainly we'd prefer one [I/O] architecture," said King, "so that the whole industry wouldn't have to support two infrastructures."
Charles Shaver, a senior member of Compaq's technical staff, said that since Compaq supports both Intel and AMD platforms, "as far as talking between chips, we can live with two different kinds [of I/O]. The one place I don't want to see a split is where it comes to expansion add-in card."
According to some industry veterans, getting Intel and AMD to work together on a unified spec is like trying to broker a peace accord in the Middle East.
"I certainly don't expect to see what Intel's doing and what AMD's doing come together," laughed Carl Stork, general manager of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Division. "I think they'll both have the volume support, the critical mass, on both sides."
Others, though, believe the industry can avoid another bus war like the one that pitted NGIO against Future I/O. Camps backing those proposals eventually merged and settled on the Infiniband spec for servers.
"When people try to solve the same problem with similar constraints, they end up with similar solutions," said Nathan Brookwood, president of market research firm Insight64, Saratoga, Calif. "The question becomes, 'How can we marry those so everyone can claim ownership?'"
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