By Siobhan Kennedy
In a move that will create deep divisions over the implementation of industry standards, IBM Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co and Compaq Computer Corp will tomorrow unveil specifications for a next generation I/O server architecture despite the fact that a group of industry heavyweights, led by Intel Corp, have already announced an alternative specification of their own. A source close to the negotiations at IBM told ComputerWire that the trio’s I/O specification, called Future I/O, will be unveiled Tuesday. It will be optimized for the Windows 2000 (aka NT) platform running some iteration of Intel’s Merced chip, he said. But more significantly, the source said the specification will offer hardware vendors the opportunity to differentiate their products from competition by enabling them to pursue different lines of engineering geared towards such things as scalability, storage and so on. The news comes off the back of Intel’s announcement, Friday, that it has formed an industry forum, along with Sun Microsystems Inc, Dell Computer Corp, Hitachi Ltd, Siemens Information Communication Network Inc and NEC Corp, to push the development and implementation of its own I/O architecture, NGIO, (Next Generation Input/Output) announced in November (CI No 3,538). But with IBM, Compaq and HP scheduled to release their own spec tomorrow, the industry will be split between two opposing architectures. Both the NGIO and Future I/O technologies are designed to do the same thing; that is, to govern how disk arrays, network cards, and other components plug into servers, thereby replacing the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) technology used today. While both camps have based their specifications on switched fabric technology, Intel says the main sticking point preventing the two from working together is the issue of how to charge IHVs (independent hardware vendors) who want to use the specification in their products.
Royalty issues
Speaking to ComputerWire Friday, Tom Macdonald, general manager of Intel’s NGIO division, said the company would welcome IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq into the group, but said that the companies were unwilling to join because of fundamental issues over royalty payments. Intel wants to offer the NGIO standard for free, whereas IBM, Compaq and HP want to charge IHVs to use the spec, he said. I can’t imagine why IHVs would want to develop products if they knew they then to pay a percentage to their revenues to a third party every time they sold a box! It’s OK when you’re talking about [royalties] for products but it’s different when you’re talking about open standards. Despite ongoing discussions with IBM, Macdonald said Big Blue was unwilling to share anything about its specification plans. But the source close to IBM strongly disagreed: For Intel to proliferate and sell chips, it needs to control key pieces of the architecture, that’s what this is all about, he said, Intel wants IBM to use its specification and give away all the work its done over the last 25 years in enterprise computing market, and that ain’t going to happen. He added: Intel doesn’t want differentiation, it wants commoditization and control. The source conceded there would be some kind of royalty fee, charged to IHVs but he stressed that the specification would be open and go through the same standards procedure as any other. The idea isn’t to generate revenue, but frankly, we’re talking about the three companies who invented enterprise I/O and spent years developing it, so why wouldn’t you charge for it? How many times does Intel give away its intellectual property free? Never!
Acrimonious wranglings
Tomorrow’s announcement is the latest twist in a series of acrimonious wranglings between the two industry giants over the last few months. It started back in September when IBM, Hewlett- Packard and Compaq revealed that they had been secretly working together on a new, joint specification, called PCI-X, to replace the current Intel- designed PCI bus (CI No 3,4
92). Weeks later, Intel announced that it had been working on a specification for a new server I/O architecture to replace the PCI bus system altogether by the end of the year 2000. Despite pleas from IBM (CI No 3,529) to encourage the chip manufacturer to give up its separate development plans and work with it on the future spec, Intel, during its Server I/O forum in San Diego in November, took the lid off specifications for its NGIO. Way back in 1987, Compaq dueled with IBM over the replacement for the standard PC ISA hardware bus, with Compaq proposing EISA and IBM the MCA Micro Channel Architecture bus. EISA was the eventual winner.
