System I/O, a group of major computer companies working toward a standard in I/O technology, has a new name: InfiniBand Trade Association.
The group, co-chaired by IBM and Intel Corp., announced the new name at a meeting in San Francisco this week, with 450 technology representatives from computer makers worldwide that are working toward the standard.
The group also announced eight new corporate members: Adaptec Inc., 3Com Corp., Lucent Technologies Inc., Nortel Networks, NEC Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Fujistu-Seimens and Hitachi Ltd.
In August, two competing standards groups-Future I/O, begun by Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Compaq Computer Corp.; and NGIO, championed by Intel Corp. and favored by Sun Microsystems Inc. and Dell Computer Corp.-reached a truce in the I/O technology battle that had threatened to stall future products (see story). The dispute centered over the way equipment like disk systems and network cards plug in to servers.
The groups agreed on a combined architecture called System I/O, a channel-based, switch fabric architecture that will include a unified protocol. Today, a bus architecture dominates I/O technology.
Exact I/O specifications will be available by the end of December, and new products based on the architecture will be shipped in 2001, according to the new, combined group.
For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld online. Story copyright © 1999 All rights reserved.
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