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To: KJ. Moy who wrote (16152)	5/10/1998 10:20:00 AM
From: Louie Liu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

KJ. Here is an interesting perspective on clustering from Bull. I think VIA is not a physical interconnect, it is a protocol for clustering. >>Early clusters relied on standard LAN technology and inexpensive adapters. In contrast, all MPPs use proprietary interconnect schemes (e.g., HPS for IBM's RS/6000 SP, BYnet for NCR's WorldMark, Mesh for Pyramid-SNI), and the interconnect is presented as the value of the system. As explained earlier, however, such development adds considerably to the cost (and thus the price) of the system without providing significant performance advantages today, because the limiting factor is the software overhead, not the hardware. Moreover, with the fantastic progress of standard interconnect technology such as Fibre Channel or ATM, this difference also is vanishing. We expect this trend toward the use of standard interconnect interfaces to become generally accepted in the next couple of years with the introduction of VIA products.<< www-frec.bull.com More from IBM. rs6000.ibm.com Regards Louie

To: KJ. Moy who wrote (16152)	5/11/1998 9:36:00 AM
From: Craig Stevenson	Respond to of 29386

KJ, I don't know why the alternative (proprietary) clustering schemes still seem to be increasing their market share. It is possible that each scheme has something to offer that Fibre Channel doesn't have yet. I still believe that the economies of scale of Fibre Channel will eventually force these companies to re-evaluate. Timing is critical, no doubt about it. Craig

To: KJ. Moy who wrote (16152)	5/11/1998 10:16:00 AM
From: Craig Stevenson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

KJ, I found portions of this DPT press release quite interesting: businesswire.com "Incorporating an Intel i960 processor and an all new DPT design, it has achieved PCI bus data transfer rates of 132MB/s burst, 66MB/s sustained, and Fibre Channel data transfer rates of 100MB/s sustained. " Note the transfer rates across the PCI bus, and especially the sustained transfer rates on the Fibre Channel itself. This is the type of performance that we have been looking for. They will also support I2O and the Windows NT 4.0, SCO 3.2.4.2, SCO OpenServer5, and NetWare 4.11 operating systems. Craig