Alan: FC-EL Related Item (Nov 97)
techweb.com
<<One of the lingering questions about Fibre Channel was answered last month when a standards committee folded a plan to merge Fibre Channel with IBM's SSA. That move clears up minor concerns about backwards compatibility with the versions of Fibre Channel that are being shipped today. Some of the details that might have been required to integrate SSA and Fibre Channel would have changed cabling requirements, so the standards committee has decided not to pursue that path. A little over a year ago, Seagate Technology, IBM, and others decided that merging SSA with Fibre Channel in future generations would provide the best performance.
The decision not to follow that plan will probably have only a minor impact on the acceptance of Fibre Channel. Right now, it has the appearance of a snowball at the top of a hill, with several disk drive companies moving to push it downhill.>>
<<That turning point has already come for Fibre Channel, the high-performance serial link that is in line to replace SCSI. A number of Fibre Channel products are already being shipped, and several more will be unveiled at Comdex. Some observers see the recent announcement of a Fibre Channel disk drive from IBM Storage Systems Division, in San Jose, Calif., as a key sign of support, particularly given the recent decision by the standard committee to drop the proposal to merge SSA and Fibre Channel.>>
<<"Given the politics and passion that have been going on, this is quite a significant turn," Jones said. "IBM's drive is not Fibre Channel EL [the proposed name for the Fibre Channel-SSA merger]; it's just Fibre Channel. That means all the major drive and system companies are supporting Fibre Channel for next-generation products.">>
Neil |
