IBM Corp’s Technology Products unit has launched a family of data compression products based on new technology: the Adaptive Lossless Data Compression technology implements data compression in hardware at system bus speeds in real-time, the company says, calling it an industry first – data compression isn’t new, but most of the products on the market today are software based and relatively slow, IBM said, adding that its new technology increases storage capacity by a factor of two to three times, without sacrificing CPU performance; the first product in the family, called the ALDC 1-5S, is a single chip device designed for in-line use and capable of compressing and decompressing data at 5M-bytes per second; it is available in volume now at $29.50 to $19.50 depending on quantities ordered; IBM says it also has the ALDC Macro, a macro core for use in application-specific integrated circuit designs that operates at 40M-bytes per second.
