According to the agreement, the companies will share early product prototypes and conduct joint testing of Ultra320 SCSI disk drives and adapters. Compatibility work, compliant with the industry-recognized SPI-4 draft standard, has commenced, with the hope of launching market-ready products by mid-year. This announcement marks another significant milestone involving Adaptec and a major disk drive manufacturer for jointly testing Ultra320 compatible products. Last quarter, Adaptec and Seagate announced plans to adopt SPI-4 draft standards.
The value and durability of SCSI is attributable to its compatibility across multiple generations, said Linus Wong, marketing director at Adaptec. By conducting intensive joint testing with multiple drive vendors, including IBM, Adaptec can provide customers the option of going with the vendor of their choice for Ultra320 technology, with the peace of mind that they are not investing in a proprietary technology.
Early testing with leading adapter vendors, like Adaptec, ensures compatibility is built into our server hard disk drives, said Gregory P. Piligian, director of IBM’s Ultrastar Hard Disk Drive Business. Our continued end-to-end compatibility testing on IBM’s Ultra320 SCSI allows us to deliver a reliable storage solution to system OEMs and other early adopters.
