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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (1755)	1/26/2000 2:06:00 AM
From: Douglas Nordgren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4808

PC Week on SIO Sides still sparing over I/O spec By Sonia R. Lelii and John S. McCright in Monterey, Calif., PC Week January 23, 2000 9:00 PM PT URL: zdnet.com The next generation of server I/O technology will address the Internet-inspired need to move huge volumes of data quickly?if it ever arrives as planned. The development of InfiniBand, a switched-fabric interconnect, is being slowed by a philosophical divide on how top systems and component makers should implement it. The crux of the debate at the Server I/O conference here last week was how much to pack into the first release of the InfiniBand specification, which was originally due in draft form last month but now won't be completed until next quarter. Intel Corp. and Sun Mi cro systems Inc. are gung-ho to get a basic version of InfiniBand into the hands of component makers and end users as quickly as possible. "PCI is not the long-term technology, so why invest in it?" said Randy Rettberg, chief technical officer at Sun's Network Storage division, in Palo Alto, Calif. "InfiniBand is saying, 'We live in the network age. Let's get with it.'" Rettberg said he believes the first InfiniBand devices will be RAID controllers that roll out in early 2002. However, big systems makers, including Hewlett-Packard Co., Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM, are content to peddle an advanced version of the PCI bus for now while building a richer InfiniBand spec. PCI-X, as the advanced version is called, offers up to eight times the throughput of PCI and is due to make its way into products this year. It should add 10 to 15 years to PCI's life span, said Michael Krause, senior I/O interconnect architect at HP. "PCI-X is a safe upgrade," Krause said. "It's well-understood, and the feature chain is all there." In the meantime, Palo Alto-based HP, Compaq and IBM plan to build a complete InfiniBand specification that they hope will provide the flexibility for components makers to produce InfiniBand hardware in volume and at low prices. "To get InfiniBand to the commodity level PCI is [at] today is going to take time," Krause added. "I think it's going to take four or five years, easily." These systems vendors say they don't want to rush to market with an immature technology, an approach they believe has slowed the adoption of Fibre Channel. While the debate rages over the severity of the I/O bottleneck, some customers say they don't know what all the fuss is about. "We definitely have not experienced an I/O bottleneck to date," said Jay Chavez, vice president of Worldwide Internet Services for Ursus Telecom Corp., of Sunrise, Fla. Ursus would not be willing to jump into InfiniBand in the near future, Chavez said. "PCI-X would make a lot more sense to us, and it's not a complete throwaway solution," he added. All sides agree that once hardware differences are hammered out, application and middleware developers must address the creation of standards for taking advan tage of the higher speeds and bandwidth offered by InfiniBand.