Craig,
Two interesting articles, one from 28 Feb 97, and the other from ***1994****. I see a connection at AT&T, especially considering the $400k video work Ancor did with AT&T last year. Kerry thinks AT&T is in hibernation. What's your take? Assuming there is a connection with this particular contract, when do you think we would hear from Ancor?
Earl
ARLINGTON, Va. -- On Feb. 28, 1997, the Defense Information Systems Agency awarded the Defense Information System Network Video Services -- Global Contract to AT&T Government Markets, Washington, D.C. The DISN Video Services - Global contract is the final of the four initial DISN contracts.
The contract is a Fixed Price Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract with a ceiling price of $125,000,000. The contract is for a three year multiyear base period with two one year options. Work will be performed at Department of Defense locations worldwide. The contractor will provide multi-vendor interoperability, dedicated video services including secure and non-secure, point-to-point and multi-point bridging, a reservation/scheduling system, video services management and monitoring, provisioning and user-site network interface equipment.
This award includes the final CONUS piece of a multicontract acquisition strategy. The DISN Acquisition Strategy consists of short term, competitively awarded contracts that will provide DISA with substantially increased control over costs and network management. It will ensure positive control of the global DISN, foster greater competition, integrate commercial products, and help the government reduce the cost of satisfying communications and video teleconferencing requirements of the warfighters.
The DISN Video Services Contract will greatly enhance the Department of Defense's ability to provide video teleconferencing services to meet the requirements of the warfighters.
Lieutenant General Albert J. Edmonds, DISA's director, attributes the success of the DISN strategy to a multiple contract approach. The multiple contract approach allows DISA to return to the marketplace at frequent intervals. This will allow DISA to insert the latest mainline commercial and military-specific technology into the infrastructure at competitive prices.
AT&T brings a superb team of subcontractors to provide the end-to-end functionality within CONUS and OCONUS traffic that either originates or terminates within CONUS. This includes responsibility to support DISN implementation and cutover.
The subcontractors include: York Telecom Corporation (small business, 8a), Eatontown, N.J.; Robbins-Gioia (large), Inc., Alexandria, Va.; OAO Corporation (small business), Greenbelt, Md.; SphereCom Enterprises (small business, woman-owned), Inc., Linden, Va.; and Reliable Integration Services, Inc. (small business, woman-owned), Dunn Loring, Va.
****************** 1994 article**************
Sam Gronner - AT&T Microelectronics
908-771-2826 (home)
201-837-0055 (office)
Gary Hinrichs - Ancor
612-932-4000 (office)
Jerry Rawls - Finisar
415-364-2722 (office)
FOR RELEASE MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1994
AT&T TO OFFER 100MBYTE/S FIBRE CHANNEL SILICON CHIPS
BERKELEY HEIGHTS, N.J. -- AT&T Microelectronics today disclosed it will begin next month to offer samples of a pair of silicon ICs which meet the Fibre Channel physical interface layer for 100 Mbyte/s data transfer among networked computer systems and interconnecting peripheral devices like mass storage disk ar- rays and high performance client-server platforms.
The ATT DA204 and DA205 transceiver set, to be demonstrated at Networks Expo in Boston (Booth 918, Feb. 15-17), consumes less than 5 watts when operating on a single 5V supply, making the chip set the first lower-priced alternative to match the power dissipation of Gallium Arsenide. A version of the chip set con- suming just 3.2 watts, the ATT DA208/210, will begin a sampling program later in 2Q94.
"The Fibre Channel gigabit solution overcomes the bot- tlenecks inherent in today's networks where the bandwidth seems to evaporate as the load on the network reaches its daily peak," said Jay W. Sherfey, manager of high performance network com- munications at AT&T Microelectronics. "High performance computer systems users demand that their networks keep pace with the power of their computing systems."
The DA204A Receiver and DA205A Transmitter ICs provide the critical retiming, receive and transmit functions for 1 Gb/s Fibre Channel compatible products under development by Ancor Com- munications, Inc., and Finisar Corporation. The collaboration is designed to give customers a wide choice of speeds, transmis- sion media and connectivity over the full spectrum of interface standards and bus types.
Terry M. Anderson, vice president-system development for An- cor Communications Inc., said the Fibre Channel solution ad- dresses three of the top customer issues, namely, consistently wide bandwidth, low latency, and lower cost than current alterna- tives. "The scaleable properties of Fibre Channel make it a com- plementary on-ramp to the future information superhighway," he said, noting that defined interfaces to both Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) specifica- tions are being developed now.
"We are using the AT&T chips and Finisar optics as a framework for our ATM-compatible Fibre Channel platform because they offer the lowest power consumption and are priced competi- tively," Anderson said. He added that Ancor intends to use modules containing the 1.0625 Gb/s bipolar AT&T transmit/receive chips and Finisar's low-cost CD lasers in its development of in- terface cards that implement high performance network adapters. Adapter boards are expected in the second half of 1994.
Finisar's president, Jerry Rawls, said "designers can rest assured that there are now reliable, tested building blocks for gigabit rate transmission and switching equipment applications. By comparison with ATM and FDDI (Fiber Distributed Data Inter- face), Fibre Channel offers an attractive option considering the slight premium for a gigabit pipe at the desktop."
AT&T Microelectronics offers a full line of high performance components and electronic systems to original equipment manufac- turers for applications in network computing, telecommunications, cellular/wireless and video. Included in the product line are CMOS, Bipolar, GaAs and High Voltage custom and standard products, advanced integrated modules, communications devices, graphics and speech processors, interconnect products, lightwave products, and power supplies.
Ancor Communications, Inc., founded in 1986 and headquar- tered in Minnetonka, Minn., is a developer of very-high-speed fiber-optic communication networks and facilities automation products. In addition to its Fibre Channel product family, Ancor network products are employed in governmental, defense and cor- porate communications networks.
Finisar Corporation, founded in 1988, is located in Menlo Park, Calif., near Stanford University. The company designs and manufactures both standard and custom fiber optic communications systems. Its fiber optic products include communication sub- systems, analog transmitters for CATV and digital transmitters and receivers.
Production quantities of the ATT DA204/205 integrated cir- cuits will be available in late 2Q94 in plastic 80-pin PQFP packages, priced at $170 per chip set in lots of 1,000. For product literature, customers should call the AT&T Microelec- tronics Customer Response Center, 1-800-372-2447 Dept. P10 (in Canada, 1-800-553-2448, Dept. P10); fax number +1-610-778-4106 (especially for customers outside of North America); or by writing to AT&T Microelectronics, Dept. AL-500404200, 555 Union Boulevard, Allentown, Pa., 18103.
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TECHNICAL BACKGROUNDER
Easy and Cost-Competitive Migration Path to Gigabit Communica- tions Right to the Desktop
The building blocks for the 1 Gb/s Fibre Channel solution address the immediate problem of a communications bottleneck caused by a bandwidth shortage among clustered workstations, mas- sively parallel minicomputers, mainframes and mass storage peripherals. Already, users of 3-D simulators in the automotive industry, biotechnology scientists, and animators using advanced graphics are hampered by relatively slow network topologies.
The scaleable nature of the Fibre Channel specifications offers the additional benefit of a graceful, cost-effective means to access wide area networks through Asynchronous Transfer Mode, the protocol that public network providers are building into their facilities to support high bandwidth multimedia communica- tions.
Fibre Channel is an approved ANSI standard actively sup- ported by leading computer manufacturers. The layered architec- ture of the standard includes a physical layer specification (FC0), which supports a variety of media such as multimode and singlemode optical fiber, 75-ohm coaxial cable, and shielded twisted pair. Since the standard scales up to gigabit data rates, much of the traffic will likely be carried over optical fiber. Consequently, to remain price-competitive, very low cost fiber optic transceivers, and silicon-based interface chips and subsystems are now emerging from companies like AT&T Microelec- tronics, Finisar Corporation and Ancor Communications. RECEIVE/TRANSMIT FUNCTIONS
AT&T's Bipolar ATT DA204 Receiver and ATT DA205 Transmitter implement the FC-0 Physical Layer and FC-1 Transmission Layer of the Fibre Channel interface by encoding and decoding data ac- cording to the standard specification.
The receiver circuit accepts high speed data from the serial port on differential PECL levels, before feeding it into the clock recovery section. The IC deserializes the retimed data, performs the decoding functions, assures byte alignment, and passes the data to the parallel TTL output port.
The transmitter accepts parallel data at the parallel input port, performs 8B/10B encoding, and converts the stream into serial data at the specified 1.0625 Gb/s. The low-speed TTL system clock, typically 53 MHz +/- 100 ppm, is used to synthesize the 1.0625 GHz internal serial-bit clock. The serialized stream is differential PECL, which can drive optical transceivers or 75-ohm coax.
OPTICAL MEDIA INTERFACE
The FTR-8510, Finisar's latest generation Integrated Optical Transceiver, combines a transmitter, receiver and link controller in a single 1.5 x 2 x .4 inch package and operates from a single +5Vdc power supply. Power consumption is minimized because the transceiver uses just .8 watts total operating power.
The FTR-8510 is fully compatible with the ANSI X3T9.3 specification for Fibre Channel, including the open fiber control (OFC) protocol. It accepts virtually any differential signal in- put (ECL or PECL), while operating over standard multimode fiber. The optical link can operate over either 50/125 micron or 62/125 micron with multiple splices or connectors. It is supplied with either duplex SC or ST optical connectors.
FIBRE CHANNEL ADAPTER CARDS
Ancor's Communications Interface Modules (CIMs) are used to link workstations, processors, and peripherals via the Fibre Channel fabric. Ancor CIMs are currently available for EISA, MCA, NuBus and VME interfaces, with versions for Sbus, PCI and SCSI under development.
The CIMs feature Ancor-designed ASICs for efficient Fibre Channel protocol translations. An embedded processor controls all Fibre Channel data transfers and speeds performance through adapter bus-mastered DMA transfers. An optional 256 Kbytes to 4 Mbytes of RAM data buffering can be added to improve network utilization and end-to-end throughput.
Driver software is available to support TCP/IP and SPX/IPX. Network operation is optimized for low-latency, high bandwidth communication. Reliable, streamlined Direct-Channel communica- tion, which bypasses TCP/IP, is also available. Direct Channel operation is ideal for parallel processing, workstation clusters, storage networks, or data-intense peer-to-peer applications. |
