PoetT., Here is Q's Dino B talking a little aboutQ end to end. Those low CPU numbers listed in that review were no fluke. There is a difference in the LAN and the SAN in that HBAs are a lot smarter( more complex with higher bariers of entry) than I thought...
QLogic Plays In Both Component and Device Markets, Taking a Technology-Agnostic
By Chris Bucholtz, VARBusiness
2:49 PM EST Thurs., Sept. 06, 2001
Does a component vendor do a better job of fulfilling its customers' needs if it is itself also a device vendor? QLogic thinks so.
QLogic is best known to system builders for its range of storage-component products--Fibre Channel and PCI/SCSI host-bus adapters (HBAs), storage-area network (SAN) controllers, and other connectivity products for both servers and storage devices--and controller chips.
"Developing both the components and the switches that work with those components gives us an understanding of the interactions between hardware that other companies don't have, and it can save us a lot of time on a time-to-market basis for our broader base of products," says Dino Balafas, director of marketing for the switch products group at the Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based QLogic. "It shaves months off our development cycles and can give us an extra 10 percent of life for our products."
QLogic's unique position--straddling the component and device markets,is evident when considering its competitors. It goes head-to-head with Emulex and JNI in the Fibre Channel HBA space; Adaptec for SCSI-based HBAs; and Brocade Communications, Vixel and Gadzoox Networks in the edge-switch space.
While other HBA makers are focusing on either SCSI or Fibre Channel, or are setting their sights on the soon-to-arrive Internet SCSI (iSCSI) and Infiniband, QLogic says it will continue to support all connectivity technologies.
"We're technology-agnostic when it comes to connectivity," Balafas says. "We're an I/O company. We couldn't care less which technology wins. All of them are very good plays."
QLogic's position in the crowded HBA field was given a boost this summer when it rolled out its SANblade QLA2300-VI 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel HBA with support for the Virtual Interface (VI) architecture. The VI architecture specification is a standard for communication at a basic level within clusters of servers and workstations. That will enable end users to build high-performance, scalable clusters using standards-based servers as building blocks.
The QLA2300-VI also uses the Direct Access File System, a new file-access protocol designed to take advantage of memory-to-memory interconnect technologies, such as VI and Infiniband, in data center environments.
Next-generation HBAs can help white-box vendors in other ways, Balafas says.
"We've been working to make them simpler and, thus, more reliable," Balafas says. "We've reduced them from five ASICs down to one, so they're less expensive to make. We're also adding intelligence to the ASICs to take some of the load off the CPU, which will allow systems builders to use less powerful processors."
Part of the goal is to give the devices "commodity-type pricing for partners," he explains.
Other approaches QLogic is taking actually displace HBAs in some situations. Earlier this year, the company introduced the ISP2200 Fibre Channel controller chip, which integrates Fibre Channel ports directly into servers and workstations at the motherboard level, freeing up PCI expansion slots for other uses. This technology, known as Fibre Down, was given a strong boost in May when Sun Microsystems used it in its 900-MHz Sun Blade 1000 workstation. |
