George,
<LOL> Yes, a little first-hand information, first from Tom (Interop) and then from me, does tend to brighten things up a bit.
I learned a few technical details that I wasn't aware of. I'm going to be a little bit vague here, but suffice it to say that based on the number of transistors, Ancor's ASIC is more complex than Intel's Pentium processor! That should indicate to most how good this ASIC team really is.
I also know the dimensions of their process, and it is cutting edge. (This is probably more of a reflection on VLSI, though.)
I did ask about latency, and whether it was an issue to their customers. I was told that it isn't a deal breaker, one way or the other, but that it is a competitive advantage for Ancor.
Also of interest might be the fact that so far, the vast majority of Fibre Channel drives in the RAID units that Ancor has been testing have been Seagates, although they expect other vendors, like IBM and Hitachi to start delivering drives soon. (I was initially surprised to hear about IBM, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.)
Craig |
