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

To: Bill who wrote (17477)	7/28/1998 10:36:00 AM
From: Lhn5	Respond to of 29386

Ed Frymoyer in an Emulex press release: "The LightPulse LP3000 PCI adapter brings very affordable high-performance throughput for storage intensive applications. Fibre channel is now the technology of choice for gigabit connectivity for storage and clustering applications. The open systems fibre channel adapter market opportunity may exceed $300 million in 1998," said Ed Frymoyer, emf Associates. "By providing aggressive price-performance, Emulex's new single chip fibre channel adapter will be one of the drivers accelerating the transition to fibre channel from SCSI connections," added Mr. Frymoyer. ---------------------------------------------------------- Ed Frymoyer in BYTE Feb 1998: There are other players, as well. One of these is the scalable coherent interface (SCI), from Dolphin Interconnect Solutions. SCI now offers speeds of 500 MBps (1 GBps bidirec tional) and low latencies that are valuable for supporting transaction-oriented applications such as databases. Where SCI achieves a latency of 2 microseconds, FCL might take 20 æs. Yes, But... Each of the alternatives to Fibre Channel has weaknesses. SCSI's technical drawbacks are discussed above. Ethernet may be 30 percent to 50 percent less efficient than Fibre Channel for typical server-to-server applications, says Forrester's Howe. In addition, Fibre Channel provides error handling in the chip. Ethernet doesn't, so you need a software stack, such as TCP/IP, that does. That means high latencies. Furthermore, three years from now, Ethernet chips and Fibre Channel chips will cost about the same for comparable speeds, predicts Ed Frymoyer, president of EMF Associates (Half Moon Bay, CA), a consultancy specializing in Fibre Channel. On a cost-per-Mbps basis, Fibre Channel is already less expensive than Gigabit Ethernet today, he adds. Frymoyer also says that he expects three Fi bre Channel-to-Ethernet bridges within a year. As for SCI, it is a parallel technology, limited to one data center. A serial version, planned for 1999, should greatly increase distances and lower costs. By that time, though, Fibre Channel may be too firmly entrenched, consigning SCI to a niche role. In addition, switched Fibre Channel may have hardware latencies comparable to those of SCI.

To: Bill who wrote (17477)	7/28/1998 10:40:00 AM
From: janski	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

Press this morning shows that they might actually be starting to listen. They are 6 month behind but they did enhance their zoning version over what Brocade has(rather had 6 month ago)and validated it by a statement of an industry expert(at least they are beginning to understand nobody will take it seriously any more by itself). The problem is: is this software actually working? or is it another 'prototype'? and once again too late by the time they get it working. The press is still missing a KEY ingredient: A CUSTOMER acceptance.

To: Bill who wrote (17477)	7/28/1998 9:56:00 PM
From: Craig Stevenson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

Bill, Admittedly, the problems are daunting, and Ancor has been slow to respond to a changing market. However, I do believe that with the proper focus, Ancor CAN turn this around. It won't be easy, but it is possible. (The revenue portion of the equation will probably be quite ugly for a while yet.) I think we should look for signs that the overall Fibre Channel market is expanding. I actually bought a few ANCR shares at $3 1/4, after Qlogic, Emulex, and Interphase all said that they were seeing increased demand for Fibre Channel. I have been looking for that as a sign that the market for Fibre Channel switches was getting close. We'll see how close I was. (I kind of wish I had waited a couple of weeks to buy, though. <g>) Craig