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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tony Viola who wrote (10532)	6/22/2000 3:16:00 AM
From: Gus	Respond to of 17183

Here's an article that provides more detail about IBM's Infiniband plans. Note the way that IBM's mainframe switching experience and knowledge base comes into play in the silicon design. These are the kinds of exquisitely subtle technical skills that a vendor like Mcdata -- a longtime exclusive supplier to IBM of ESCON directors and FICON bridge cards -- brings to the table as an independent company 'coopetiting' with the likes of Brocade and Ancor. One way to gauge this design advantage in practical terms is to go to the Mcdata site to look at the increased number of servers that can be connected to the SAN by redundant 32-port ED5000 directors vis-a-vis a cascade of Brocade's 16-port Silkworm fabric switches, the very same switches inside Mcdata's directors. This is a 4x advantage that EMC/Mcdata have been able to maintain with its 64-port Connectrix, which I believe contains Ancor's recently qualified 16-port switches. The Infiniband architecture is designed to speed communication between systems and enable the clustering of servers and peripherals. IBM is one of several silicon vendors developing products that support the communication architecture. Infiniband is a switch-fabric architecture that uses four-wire links and multiple levels of redundancy to off-load processor cycles devoted to communications. An Infiniband link operates at 2.5 Gbits/second using either packet or connection-based methods. The three Infiniband chips that IBM has described: a host channel adapter (HCA); target channel adapter (TCA); and switch chip will work together to enable server clustering. The chips will be manufactured in 0.18-micron CMOS at IBM's fabrication facility in Burlington, Vt., according to Jim Bowers, server architecture marketing manager at IBM Microelectronics. Bowers said IBM drew on its mainframe experience with switch-fabric architecture to develop the Infiniband chips, and incorporated features such as on-chip serial links and Infiniband protocol handlers. Responding to customer interest, IBM will make its Infiniband technology part of its ASIC core library for custom chip development, Bowers said. IBM's three standard chips will support 1x or 4x Infiniband, or up to 10 Gbits/second of serial-bit bandwidth, the company said. The TCA chip enables Infiniband input for PCI/PCI-X-based peripherals such as a RAID controller, Ethernet adapter or router. The chip includes the Infiniband transport layer, management layer, network layer, link layer, physical interface, and the logic required to translate between PCI semantics and Infiniband message passing. The switch chip, which sits between an HCA and TCA on a system motherboard, card or switch cluster, allows for packet information transfers from a host to I/O. The 8-port 4x switch supports up to five virtual lanes per port and routes packets from one port to another. The physical layer includes IBM's patented data encoding and transmission scheme for enterprise system connection. eetimes.com The Mcdata prospectus also explains in detail the pass-through rights that will eventually accrue to a fully independent Mcdata as a result of the 1999 IBM-EMC strategic agreement which was modified earlier this year along with the settlement of the Data General vs IBM patent infringement lawsuits. Under terms of the accord, EMC will continue to purchase advanced IBM disk drives for incorporation into EMC's Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems. In the future, the agreement is likely to include other IBM technologies, such as microprocessors and advanced custom chips. The alliance also provides for a broad patent cross-license between the two companies for storage and other technologies. In addition, the companies agreed to work together to further develop mutually beneficial business opportunities. emc.com Also, we have an aggressive peace at last in switch land. All 5 FC switch vendors -- Brocade, Ancor, Vixel, Mcdata, Gadzoox -- have agreed to make their switches interoperable. Earlier, the 5 switch vendors created OSFI (Open Standard Fabric Initiative) just outside the orbit of the EMC-sponsored FibreAlliance. This is great news for EMC and Mcdata since they have a substantial lead in the deployment of SANs and directors. The interoperability of the fabric switches that go into the director-class switches that connect SANs to servers and other SANs make it easier for EMC to widen its lead, IMO. Fibre Channel Switch Vendors Agree On Common Interoperability Standard "Interoperability among Fibre Channel switches is a key requirement for our SAN customers," said Duane Dueker, Vice President of SAN Marketing for IBM. "As SANs grow, customers will want to add new technology, reconfigure their networks, combine SANs, or consolidate after mergers -- the common fabric protocol is an important step toward mixed vendor fabrics, and mature SAN infrastructure. We are glad to see this need being met through the open standards process in NCITS.........." ".......As a pioneer in the drive to implement multi-vendor storage networks, EMC endorses industry-wide initiatives to accelerate the development of interoperable, standards-based SAN technologies," concluded Don Swatik, Vice President of Strategic Planning at EMC Corporation. "Cross-vendor cooperation of this kind is an essential first step in ensuring that customers can deploy open storage networks quickly, easily and cost-effectively." Message 13917313

To: Tony Viola who wrote (10532)	6/22/2000 12:01:00 PM
From: Nichols	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17183

I am not a techie. I am not worried whatsoever about the Gilder report (I own both EMC&NTAP). From what I see, there is sooo much business in storage that both of these Kings will thrive for some time. Furthermore, EMC didn't get to where they are by sitting on their hands. They will continue to innovate, and if need be, buy into a NAS company. If there is any significant drop, I'll take this (FUD) oppurtunity to increase my holdings. EMC is so rock solid, great upside potential with relatively little risk. BWDIK.