Features - Storage Innovations:

QLOGIC ANNOUNCES 10GB/4GB HI-SPEED FIBRE CHANNEL INITIATIVE

QLogic Corp has announced its intention to introduce Fibre Channel chips, host bus adapters (HBAs) and fabric switches supporting both ten gigabit per second (10Gb) and four gigabit per second (4Gb) speeds. For applications that stream large amounts of data across a fabric such as inter switch links, voice and video, the company's 10Gb products will deliver five times the bandwidth of current 2Gb products. For corporations with growing investments in 1Gb or 2Gb storage networks, QLogic 4Gb products will double current Fibre Channel performance at about the same price as 2Gb Fibre Channel, while maintaining backwards compatibility with 1Gb and 2Gb servers, networks and storage. QLogic will begin rolling out High Speed Fibre Channel products by the end of 2003.

Customer Requirements for 10/4 High Speed Fibre Channel

IT professionals realize that as each day goes by, the users they're tasked to support are driving more transactions, digital photographs, voice files and video files across their networks. It's easy for SAN architects to understand the need for storage networks with 10Gb of bandwidth and beyond.

SAN architects want a cost-effective, backwards-compatible migration path while 10Gb Fibre Channel is gradually adopted. They're asking for 4Gb storage systems, fabric switches and HBAs that cost about the same as similar 2Gb products and that are 100% compatible with installed 1Gb and 2Gb products.

"Every time I add a switch to my SAN I waste ports for trunking and my performance is still degraded." said Bob Stavrou, director of IS for US Labs. "I look forward to having 10Gb pipes between my switches to free ports and eliminate trunking software fees."

"I expect to consolidate my tape drives into an automated tape library within the next 18 months," said Ed Roberts, president of the Orange County Windows NT User Group. "I want 4Gb connections from my library to my largest servers to reduce backup times, as long as it costs about the same as 2Gb and plugs-and-plays with my existing SAN."

The Fibre Channel Industry is Responding

Major manufacturers of Fibre Channel components and systems have been developing products based on both 10Gb and 4Gb Fibre Channel standards for quite some time. Storage system, switch and HBA manufacturers are focused on developing systems with 10Gb Fibre Channel interfaces while disk drive and tape drive manufacturers are developing next generation drives with 4Gb Fibre Channel interfaces.

Responding to feedback from their customers, companies such as QLogic are extending the availability of cost-effective 4Gb Fibre Channel products from peripherals, to fabric switches and HBAs.

10/4 High Speed Fibre Channel Products from QLogic

QLogic intends to begin introducing Fibre Channel chips, HBAs, fabric switches and management software supporting both 10Gb and 4Gb speeds including:

• TEC/FTEC: single chip hard disk drive controllers
• FAS/FFAS: single chip tape controllers
• ISP: single chip host bus adapters
• GEM: single chip management controllers
• SANblade: host bus adapters
• SANbox: fabric switches
• SANsurfer Management Suite: switch and HBA management software