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To: Allen Benn who wrote (4296)	2/17/1999 10:53:00 PM
From: Allen Benn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

A Report on I2O and NGIO – Branding I2O I2O is a compelling abstraction for I/O processing that appears to have gained the critical mass for becoming a de facto standard applicable to most computer architectures. The remaining issue is the extent to which end users in the IT community should be informed about the merits of I2O. Elevating I2O awareness in the IT community, specifically by indicating the precise technology deployed, is called “branding.” To the extent that IT professionals find I2O attractive, they would be willing to pay a premium for I2O-capable devices, and enhance demand. I/O devices typically house technology that is not branded. For example, HP deskjet printers rarely indicate there is even a microprocessor inside, much less that it runs an RTOS, typically VxWorks. How many digital cell-phone users look upon their handset as a computer rather than a phone? Ask your friendly automobile salesman, who knows everything important about engines and leather seats, whether your new car implements the Control Area Network with the OSEK standard, and with what microprocessors and operating systems on devices. None of these details are branded, because the manufacturers don't want customers to fuss about them. In contrast, Intel broke the advertising mold when it branded its processors using the slogan, “Intel Inside.” Intel sought aggressively to brand I2O soon after it was introduced, but this strategy was changed partly because of the looming introduction of NGIO, and partly because of criticism that I2O requires an IOP – often manufactured by Intel. At this stage in the bus war, Intel feels compelled to blunt the IOP criticism. The solution is to promote specialized versions of I2O that can be caste in silicon for a specific purpose. Specialized devices sacrifice the ability to support many of the features of I2O that IT managers might demand if they understood all the ramifications. It follows that the timing is inappropriate for emphasizing the usefulness of these features, which would happen with branding. The problem is that as long as fully-featured I2O is not branded, even to the point that an end-user knows whether “Intelligent” means I2O or something entirely different, there is less incentive for emergence of a middleware niche based on Intermediate Service Modules (ISM). Without vibrant ISM offerings, there is little reason for the IT community to care one way or another about what's inside the box – as long as it meets performance specs reliably at a competitive price. While Intel benefits in the short term from not branding I2O (or encouraging branding by the I2O SIG), in the long run, the decision not to brand I2O, will slow the industry's ability to cope with the complexity Intel envisions with its mantra, “a billion connected computers; a trillion transactions.” With the immutable shift of the computing center of gravity away from centralized processing and toward networking, the industry needs ISM functionality broadly diffused throughout nodes. The ISM is the natural spot in I/O processing to resolve security issues, translate data, handle smart communication packets, monitor and balance I/O processing, and enable subsystem-wide protocol updates with a click of a mouse button. I2O will become pervasive in all forms, as an elegant mechanism to off-load I/O from the CPU and to reduce time and cost to market. Once the bus wars are over, and NGIO and/or Future I/O are established, I would expect that awareness of I2O will increase, ultimately along with an emerging middleware niche. As IT professionals become educated to the potential to administer networks better and simpler using full-featured I2O, they will demand to know what's inside the box, looking for an I2O IOP. If you think political strategists operate mainly inside Washington's beltway, think again. Just as the center of computing gravity is shifting to networking, the center of political power is shifting to technology. Allen I2ONGIOX