Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (13288)	10/9/2001 10:27:54 AM
From: Gus	Respond to of 17183

This is an interesting twist. Earlier this month, EMC formally introduced CacheStorm and its virtual volume extensions, as part of a 100-point refresh of Symmetrix. CacheStorm allows EMC to rapidly increase the size of its cache subsystem to 64GB (vs HDS' 32GB) while increasing the number of parallel cache operations to 16 (vs HDS 4) with the addition of global cache directors (microprocessors). The cache subsystem is the most critical part of any RAID design because it buffers the much slower electro-mechanical disk drives from the much faster solid-state processors. The difference in latencies can be analogized as the difference between minutes and weeks. That is why one can also find high-end servers with large amounts of cache; although, those are one-dimensional cache technologies that support only one operating system unlike the Symmetrix cache subsystem which can support multiple operating systems. EMC's Hyper-Volume extensions allow the creation of up to 8,000 virtual volumes with logical to physical relationships up to 128:1. This means that with any combination of faster and smaller disk drives or slower and bigger disk drives, EMC can employ a higher degree of parallelism to compress workloads than anybody else since everybody else is still stuck at 4,000 virtual volumes or lower. Under Hitachi's relationship with HDS, the $65B parent company takes care of system level R&D while the $1.6B HDS focuses on storage software. It appears from this CRN report that HDS is already scrambling to match EMC's latest advancements by licensing specific parts of HWP's proprietary microcodes (1.2 million lines of code) even though HDS is not expected to update its Lightning until 1H2002. Throughout much of the 90s, Hitachi was frequently criticized for not veering too far from IBM's mainframe design philosophy even when it had the fastest mainframes on the planet. It appears that this 'exact copy' mentality is still alive and well at Hitachi. This raises the issue of what is going to happen to Sun and HWP, which both have 3-year deals with HDS, when EMC widens its technical lead over HDS since both Sun and HWP are basically peddling the same stuff. Sun and HWP are already using internal crossbar switches in their high-end server lines so it's conceivable that they may decide to roll their own internally switched arrays in order to differentiate themselves from each other. While Sun continues to be the dominant Unix vendor, HWP is widely considered to be the vendor with the most cogent Unix/NT strategy as a result of its role in the development of Itanium, which includes 6 months of exclusivity on some of Itanium's internal features. HWP is also well aware that Sun has serious credibility problems in the S390/zOS and NT/W2K environments that partly explain why it has lost so much market share in the Solaris external storage market in the last 6 years, going from 100% in 1995 to 34% in 2000 (principally losing share to EMC). Hitachi Licences HP Microcode For Arrays Sold To Sun And Channel By Joseph F. Kovar CRN Santa Clara, Calif. - 7:51 PM EST Fri., Oct. 05, 2001 Hitachi Data Systems has quietly licensed portions of HP storage microcode and is making it available to vendors such as Sun Microsystems that resell Hitachi storage arrays. Hitachi is also making the HP code available in its Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 arrays that are sold through the channel, an Hitachi spokesperson confirmed. Sun Microsystems is among the vendors that rebrand Hitachi's 9900 arrays under a reseller agreement signed in August. HP also OEM's the Hitachi storage arrays, sold as the XP512. But unlike Sun, HP uses a unique microcode aimed at improving its performance in HP-UX environments. Sun sales representatives have been telling solution providers that the Sun StorEdge 9900 is now the same as HP's XP512, one solution provider told CRN. An Hitachi official told CRN that this is only partially true. Hitachi has quietly licensed certain features of HP's microcode for use in all of its 9900 models, including models sold to other vendors and through its channel. In particular, Hitachi is licensing HP's LUN Address Expansion, Queue Depth, and LUN Security features, which improve the performance and efficiency of storage networks in which the 9900 array is connected to HP-UX servers, the Hitachi spokesperson said. As a result, the 9900 and HP's XP512 offer the same basic connectivity when connected to HP-UX environments, said the spokesperson. However, much of the microcode in the XP512 is still exclusive to HP, allowing HP to build value-added software and solutions unique to the XP512, the spokesperson said. crn.channelsupersearch.com