Sun/Intel alliance worries Wintel world
Will Next Generation Input/Output alliance cause split inside Wintel
group?
By Deborah Gage, Sm@rt Reseller
February 26, 1999 1:19 PM PT
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems Inc.'s alliance with Intel
Corp. and Dell Computer Corp. on the Next Generation Input/Output
architecture was the talk of the Intel developer forum here this week.
And it has Intel's traditional partners worried.
Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp.
have invested heavily in Intel architecture through the years and have
counted on Intel's loyalty in return. Microsoft in particular is already
grappling with delays of Windows 2000, and now it is faced with
supporting two competing server architectures if Intel cannot reach an
agreement with the Future I/O Forum spearheaded by Compaq, HP and
IBM. Microsoft has invested in development for Compaq's Alpha chip
and plans simultaneous releases of Windows 2000 on Intel and Alpha.
The split has been brewing for months. Parties on all sides agree that
current I/O architecture has become a bottleneck and must change. I/O
performance -- the ability to get data between peripherals and the CPU --
has not kept up with peripheral performance or CPU performance, and a
bus-based architecture is becoming too hard to implement. Opportunities
to make such fundamental changes are rare, and whoever controls the
standard will reap big rewards.
Tensions rise
But the companies disagree on how to change. NGIO members tout
NGIO's flexibility and its ability to isolate peripherals so that a faulty one
cannot bring down an entire system. Future IO members say NGIO
leaves behind too much legacy technology and that Intel should not be
too powerful.
Intel announced NGIO at its September developers forum and then
cohosted a meeting on NGIO with Sun last November. Sun and Intel had
been working together on NGIO for about a year, after Sun approached
Intel about supporting a new I/O architecture developed by Sun. NGIO is
processor-independent, allowing each company to guard information
about its own chip architecture.
Compaq, HP and IBM, meanwhile, were already at work extending
Intel's PCI bus architecture without Intel's blessing, and earlier this
month the companies held the first meeting of their own forum -- Future
I/O -- to carry that work forward. Compaq at some point was also
working with Intel on NGIO, which Intel says it started two years ago,
but neither company will discuss details. Intel: It shouldn't be catastrophic
Publicly both sides play down the dispute, and negotiations are ongoing.
"Because we work on so many things together, it is not surprising that
something like this should happen, nor should it be catastrophic," says
Intel Corporate Vice President John Miner. "There are three empty seats
on the NGIO steering committee."
Future I/O members say Intel has already made concessions by allowing
each member of the NGIO steering committee to have a vote on the
specifications. The fact that Intel is under investigation by the Federal
Trade Commission has made the company especially sensitive to any
allegations of improperly controlling intellectual property.
But Intel does insist on its right to set the basic standard for I/O
architecture as it has set standards in so many other areas. And Intel's
partners say privately the rift hurts.
"We just got Merced, and our engineers are already scratching their
heads because it's a totally different chip from what's come before," said
one partner. "It took eight to 10 months to get Xeon systems out the
door, and here we're looking at a new instruction set, new operating
system, new applications -- everything is new. Plus we've got the
transition to RDRAM, and Intel is starting to talk about McKinley. We've
got a lot on our plates."
Partners also question Intel's wisdom in relying on Sun, whose CEO
Scott McNealy regularly expresses his disdain for Wintel and refuses to
ship Intel-based systems. "Why doesn't Intel see that?" one asks.
Sun forgets ahead
Sun, meanwhile, will support NGIO in Solaris and SPARC and will
integrate Jini into the architecture. At the first meeting of the NGIO
Alliance Monday night, Sun announced it is chairing a Fat Pipes Working
Group. Fat Pipes is a high-bandwidth cousin to NGIO, suitable for
servers, that promises to move an order of magnitude more data in the
same amount of time.
At an NGIO seminar on Tuesday, Sun and Intel trotted out a series of
high-level supporters, demonstrating that NGIO could carry Intel into
lucrative new markets. "We are very excited about this, and the military
is excited about it too. This is like the transition from the horse to the
internal combustion engine," said Ray Alderman, the executive director
of the trade association VITA.
Dell's role, meanwhile, appears to be to provide a high-volume channel
for Intel-blessed architecture. "Dell's intellectual property is its business
model," said one NGIO member. "No one -- not Compaq or HP or
anyone -- can match Dell's inventory turns. It's built into their business."
Dell could not be reached for comment.
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