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Technology Stocks : The New QLogic (ANCR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jmanvegas who wrote (27398)	6/25/2000 5:22:00 PM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

InfiniBand Specs Fleshed Out (06/23/00, 3:21 p.m. ET) By Mitch Wagner, InternetWeek Intel and systems vendors met last week at a developers' conference to hammer out specs for InfiniBand, a technology that could be used to link the various types of networks in a data center and reduce the number of nets IT managers have to juggle. Infiniband would replace the PCI bus on PCs and servers and be used to tie systems, storage devices, and WAN devices into a single network. IBM last week outlined plans to develop hardware implementing InfiniBand, which could be available in products from IBM and other vendors in the second half of 2001. Why the move to Infiniband? The PCI bus, the current standard for I/O for PCs and other commodity systems, is running out of gas. Even the new PCI-X standard is relatively slow, running at about 1 Gbyte/s, and multiple devices added to a PCI-X bus must all share the same bandwidth. By contrast, InfiniBand starts at 2.5 Gbyte/s in each direction. Later generations could offer speeds of 10 to 30 Gbyte/s. Moreover, since InfiniBand is a switched-fabric architecture, additional devices added to the connection will bring additional bandwidth, said Jim Pappas, director of initiative marketing for the enterprise platform group at Intel, Santa Clara, Calif. "InfiniBand is going to provide higher bandwidth and make it simpler to interconnect different machines," said Linley Gwenapp, an analyst with the Linley Group. "SCSI and buses like that are running out of bandwidth, and InfiniBand is going to be faster and more scalable." InfiniBand has the support of major systems vendors. In addition to Intel, the steering committee developing the specifications includes Compaq (stock: CPQ), Dell (stock: DELL), Hewlett-Packard (stock: HWP), IBM, Microsoft (stock: MSFT), and Sun (stock: SUNW). The technology has the backing of 160 companies, including systems vendors and networking and peripherals vendors. The specifications are expected to be released in September or October, Pappas said. IBM said it plans to ship host channel adapters for servers, target channel adapters for storage and networking devices, and eight-port switches for InfiniBand late next year. In the first phase of InfiniBand deployment, beginning when products ship late next year, systems, storage, and networking hardware will support both PCI and InfiniBand. But ultimately they'll all connect through a single InfiniBand switch and share resources, Pappas said. InfiniBand also will eventually replace Ethernet in the data center, although Ethernet will continue to be used in buildings and to connect buildings on a campus, said Mitch Shults, director of business development at Intel. The technology also will be able to tunnel storage over IP, using IPv6 -- something that would allow users to perform remote mirroring. So there GG. The end of Ethernet in data centers from someone who should know....

To: jmanvegas who wrote (27398)	6/25/2000 6:05:00 PM
From: Bruce Brown	Respond to of 29386

I assume you are talking about this release: siliconinvestor.com Brocade and Emulex already had a partnership and this announcement was simply an extension of that. I would have to say that it is good for the fibre channel industry and certainly is a direct competitive line up against QLogic and Ancor. How does it affect Emulex? I would have to think that the relationship mentioned in the article could only be a net positive for Emulex.: ...under the terms of the alliance, Brocade and Emulex will work together on joint technology development, standards initiatives, and SAN interoperability and product support programs to facilitate the deployment of next-generation Fibre Channel-based SAN solutions. That's no plug for Emulex as they, along with QLogic are not companies I have in my portfolio. Nor have I spent much time doing any analysis on them for my investing purposes. Although the stock prices have mirrored each other, QLogic appears to have better gross margins and profit margins than Emulex at the current time. I haven't studied the two well enough to know what the trend lines are for those margins. The important thing going forward is the projected growth for the fibre channel space. If projections are met or exceeded, the growth wave should go a long way in carrying everyone up the beach. Sorry that sounds so Californian, but my family leaves on Sunday for a two month vacation in the Bay Area. So waves and beaches are on my mind after a year of being 'inland' here in Austria. I would like to share with you a very wise view from Jeff Applegate at Lehman - if you will allow. If you think about where we are with the virtual economy at the moment, it's still only 2% of retail sales, and it's about 3.5% of wholesale sales. First one looks like it's growing at 100% year over year; the other one looks like it's growing 150%. If you think about where we are with the Internet at the moment on a company basis, Cisco and Dell (DELL:Nasdaq - news) are the preeminent examples of B2B and B2C. Every company on the planet wants to look as much like Cisco and Dell as it possibly can. It's the most efficient way to do business, reduce cost of goods sold, improve productivity, etc. And everyone will get there to a degree, depending on what kind of business they're ultimately in. The economics there are exceedingly compelling on the B2B side. Then you've got the B2C side. We go to the Internet for convenience, for fulfillment, for price. If you think about the Internet for consumers, it's cumbersome, it's a pain to use. It's still very crude. It's also not a mass market -- but it will be. And when it becomes a mass market, that's going to demand a lot more routers, switches, servers, bandwidth, storage. I'm a big believer in IP/Broadband "Next Generation Networks" as an investment play for the decade. If you haven't had the chance, stop by at: nextgenerationnetworks.com to read and see where the picks, tools and shovels of the things Applegate is talking about look the most compelling. Routers, switches, broadband, storage, software for the network - each segment has some compelling investment options for all of us to enjoy the next decade's growth as the mass market develops. BB