NGIO Forum Announces Release Of 1.0 Specification

On-time Delivery of NGIO Specification Culminates Two-year Industry Effort as Members Plan for First Products in 2000

PORTLAND, ORE., July 20, 1999 --- The NGIO (Next Generation I/O) Forum® today announced the immediate release of the NGIO 1.0 specification. The channel-based, switched-fabric architecture provides a new high speed, low cost, reliable and scalable data transfer method. It is designed to allow future servers to uncompromisingly meet customer requirements for high speed transfer of data between servers, storage, networks and other attach points. As e-commerce, internet communication and media convergence intersect, NGIO technology will meet the demand for increasing server I/O performance, reliability and scalability.

The NGIO specification is a comprehensive blueprint ready for developers to use in designing products for high-performance systems. The specification details the architectural requirements for implementing each of the elements of an end-to-end solution. These include, Host Channel Adapters (HCA), physical links, switches, Target Channel Adapters (TCA), fabric services and software infrastructure.

"The rapid growth of the internet-based economy means that servers in the corporate data center must dramatically improve performance, reliability and scalability to keep pace with user demands," said Charles Andres, NGIO Marketing Working Group Chairman and Group Manager, I/O Technologies, Market Development Engineering, Sun Microsystems. "The availability of the NGIO specification for a switched-fabric channel architecture permits hardware, software and operating system vendors to begin immediately developing products that will dramatically improve servers and related systems, instead of waiting a year or longer for alternative schemes."

The specification, which has been in development for more than two years by members of the Forum, provides the framework for implementation of the NGIO architecture for development tools and services, silicon, peripherals and systems. The NGIO architecture builds upon existing storage and networking I/O standards and protocols, providing a new physical point-to-point architecture for servers and devices connected to them.

NGIO Specification Provides the Fabric Which Carries the Data
The NGIO low-latency switch and link fabric technology provides a single data path across the fabric for each device to send data directly to it target without interference from, or contention with, other devices, unlike any shared-bus technology. In addition, the high-speed fabric has scalable capacity to send data through multiple channels simultaneously at a data rate of 2.5 gigabits per second, per channel, full duplex. An NGIO fabric can provide scalable bandwidth, meaning that the total bandwidth of the fabric increases in proportion to the number of devices connected to it.

"The application of NGIO fabric-based I/O technology makes scalable servers practical, while at the same time enabling much greater reliability and availability," said Irv Robinson, NGIO Steering Committee Chairman and Director, NGIO Architecture, Intel Corporation. "NGIO will increase innovation in the server industry through an I/O architecture that provides the foundation for sophisticated new storage and networking capabilities."

Among the elements required to implement an NGIO solution, HCAs provide connectivity to the host system bus and function as an I/O scheduler, DMA engine and access gatekeeper. The physical links are four wire links and TCAs attach I.O devices to the NGIO fabric. The NGIO specification also provides for peer-to-peer communications between peripherals without sending the message through the host CPU and host bus. Applications such as high-performance back-up, e-mail, web traffic and media processing will particularly benefit from this feature.

NGIO Forum Organization
Led by Steering Committee members Dell, Hitachi, Intel, NEC, Siemens and Sun Microsystems, NGIO Forum members represent all segments of enterprise computing, including systems, peripherals, enabling silicon, tools and communications. The organization has grown from the original six members to over seventy-five members since its formal introduction this past February (a complete list of members is available on the NGIO Forum web site). Member companies and third parties are currently developing the design tools, development kits and test equipment which developers need. It is anticipated that many of these support products will be announced and available by year-end.

Developers' Conference to Help Speed Time to Market
To promote faster development of hardware and software supporting the specification, the NGIO Forum has planned its first developers' conference for September 28-30, 1999, in Newport Beach, California. The conference will be open to members and non-members, and include an extensive review of the specification. The review will specifically address implementations issues faced by developers. In addition, sessions will allow attendees to network with other vendors who provide enabling tools or technologies and complementary products. For more information or to register, contact the NGIO Forum at its web site www.ngioforum.org or contact the Forum by phone.

The NGIO Forum was organized as a non-profit industry standards group in February, 1999. Companies interested in joining the Forum, or obtaining more information about the Forum, the specification or the activities of the working groups, may contact the NGIO Forum at 5440 SW Westgate Drive, Ste. #217, Portland, OR 97221, phone (503) 297-0426, fax (503) 297-1090.

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