Truce in the server technology wars
By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 24, 1999, 1:10 p.m. PT
A battle of the titans over a crucial server computer technology standard
could end in the next few days.
The battle pitted Intel against three of its biggest chip customers,
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Compaq. At stake has been the future design of
servers--the high-speed, high-end computers that are the brains behind the
Internet and most other networks.
The Intel camp, along with allies including Dell and Sun Microsystems,
favored a standard called Next-Generation
Input/Output, or NGIO. HP, IBM, and
Compaq initiated Future I/O, and rounded
up support from 3Com, Adaptec, and
Cisco. The specifications govern how
equipment such as network cards or disk
systems plug into the servers.
"The two specs are going to merge," said
a source familiar with the negotiations
today. The companies involved will
choose a new name for the standard and
plan to have the technology ready in time
for "McKinley," the second in Intel's line of
64-bit chips.
A merger would lift a huge burden of
uncertainty from all the companies
involved. Moving into the high end of the
market is a key part of Intel's plans, but it
would be much more difficult without the
support of HP, Compaq, and IBM, all of
whom already sell their own high-end
proprietary systems.
And for the server makers, a single
standard brings the advantages of the Intel
business model, where standardization
means components ship in higher volumes
and therefore cost less.
The lead negotiators from the two sides,
who have been meeting for months, have
agreed on a proposal and will take it back
to their respective camps so each side can
vote, sources familiar with the issue said. A
Future I/O Alliance vote could happen as
soon as this week, but one source said
Intel had hoped to delay the vote a little,
likely so the company could announce the
agreement at the Intel Developer Forum that begins August 31.
Members of the Future I/O Alliance will vote in favor of the merger plan, an
industry source said.
The dispute could have been almost as big as they come for the computing
industry, said Aberdeen Group analyst James Gruener. "It had the potential
to be seven or eight on a scale of one to ten," he said.
The biggest winners in a merged standard will be server customers, who will
have one less technology choice they have to worry about; peripheral card
manufacturers, who will have a simpler time designing products; and the
server companies, who will have an easier time selling their products,
Gruener said.
Both sides have been easing toward compromise for months but differences
persisted. The Future I/O proponents argued that NGIO couldn't transfer data
fast enough and therefore didn't merit the difficulties of a system design
change. The NGIO camp said that Future I/O would arrive late and was too
expensive, and that they were working on a faster, "fat pipes" version of
NGIO to deal with the data transfer speed issue. Fat pipes refers to a
faster way to transfer data from servers to components such as
network cards.
The proposal resolves these technical concerns, as well as issues of
how the companies will govern
the standard and how they will
handle the thorny issue of
sharing intellectual property.
Sun Microsystems, which makes
its own high-end servers and
has been leading the fat pipes
NGIO development, had
pushed for an August deadline
to merge the specifications,
sources said.
Intel is in the driver's seat when
it comes to the future server
design, said Dataquest analyst
Kimball Brown. Though the
Future I/O camp had hoped to
stall the process, the Intel camp
was able to show it was moving
ahead, he said.
Version 1.0 of NGIO was
released in July, an event that
provoked criticism from HP's
Martin Whittaker of the Future
I/O camp. Whittaker said the
NGIO advocates said a revised
version would be coming later,
in essence admitting that the first version wasn't good enough.
In an interview earlier this month, a Sun executive, Charles Andres,
declined to comment on the deadline but said: "To be pragmatic
about this, if you're going to get a merge, it's better to try to get a
merge to happen sooner rather than later. It gets more difficult as
time goes on."
Andres said the Future I/O and the fat pipes version of NGIO were
where the specifications would be merged.
"It very well may be the features and benefits in the Future I/O
specification...would marry very nicely" with NGIO fat pipes, he said.
Both use a similar number of wires connecting into and out of the
input/output subsystem, he said.
"From a technical standpoint, a merge is very possible. We could
stand to get a specification that has a lot of the good features of
both," Andres said.
Representatives from NGIO declined to comment on specifics of
negotiations, reiterating the position that they would like to see a
single specification.
See Story in Context
Related news stories
• Server debate takes Internet turn May 24, 1999
• Rival server camps still at odds March 30, 1999
• Firms seek to end connection rift February 11, 1999
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