Gus, I am looking forward to the fall conferences to see what all the players have to say/offer. Here is an I band report.....haven't read before how Iband will decrease the need for cached data....
Friday, August 31, 2001, 2:21 PM ET.
New Technology To Speed I/O
By L. Scott Tillett
Vendors including IBM and SAS Institute earlier this week demonstrated technology that promises to speed server transaction processing by offloading I/O functions from server CPUs to network devices dedicated to I/O. Several vendors also announced partnerships aimed at speeding delivery of the technology, dubbed InfiniBand.
InfiniBand would replace the current Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) I/O connection on computers with devices that move data into and out of processors, storage systems and databases more quickly.
As processor speeds increase, current I/O connectors will have difficulty keeping up, according to observers. For some users, that disparity means installing more servers to compensate for the I/O bottleneck.
"Server CPU utilization is much higher than it needs to be," said Jamie Gruener, a Yankee Group analyst. "The goal is really to reduce the number of cycles that you need to do I/O." Current processing speeds are as much as three to four times greater than current I/O speeds, Gruener said.
Jim Berlino, a research analyst at Merrill Lynch's interoperability lab, said his company faces I/O bottlenecks today because of its transaction volume and that InfiniBand could help address them.
"It removes the I/O obstacle and frees the server up to do a lot of processing," he said. He's concerned, however, about potential disparities in vendor implementations.
Emerging InfiniBand I/O technology will support throughput ranging from 500 megabytes to 6 gigabytes per second, compared with current processor throughput potential of 100 megabits to 10 gigabits per second, said Ramon Acosta, vice president at InfiniBand management software vendor Lane15 Software.
At last week's Intel Developer Forum, IBM demonstrated its DB2 database running on an InfiniBand network, which means the server was dedicated to database processing. Software developer SAS Institute demonstrated its WebHound analytical software on an InfiniBand network.
Meanwhile, AMD, BMC Software, InfiniCon Systems, InfiniSwitch, Lane15 Software, Nissho Electronics, Prisa Networks and QLogic announced an alliance to develop standards for InfiniBand interoperability. And InfiniSwitch Corp., a maker of InfiniBand switching technology, announced an agreement with Banderacom, a semiconductor company, to use Banderacom products in InfiniSwitch's switching technology.
The first InifinBand products--adapter cards that plug into servers and offload I/O--are expected later this year, said Yankee Group's Gruener. They'll be followed by hybrid servers that will support PCI and InfiniBand, then, ultimately, pure InfiniBand servers, as well as dedicated InfiniBand network switches.
InfiniBand should ease IT management challenges associated with "hot" data, which are frequently accessed databases that IT managers typically cache for quick access by end users, said Jeff Jones, IBM marketing director for data management. Since InfiniBand should allow servers to pull data from storage much faster, cache management challenges should fade, Jones said.
I/O bottlenecks at dispensing equipment maker Nordson Corp. aren't an issue yet, said Kevin Beattie, director of corporate information services. But as the company increases its focus on data warehousing and business intelligence, speed becomes more important, he said. |
