Storage Technology Corp, Louisville, Colorado has answered IBM’s new generation of 3380 disk drives and controllers with several new products led by a triple-capacity upgrade for the 8380 drive family that increases storage capacity to 7.56Gb per drive and allows a maximum string capacity of 30.24Gb. The company says the higher capacities are made possible by enhancements both to its thin-film head technology and advances in disk media, and the new head-disk assemblies will be available in its 8380R units from the fourth quarter, with upgrade packages for installed 8380R, 8380P and 8380E drives following in the second quarter 1989. The company also announced an Actuator Level Buffer feature for the 8380R reduced footprint storage subsystem, saying that it significantly cuts delays caused by rotational position sensing misses in highly active subsystems, resulting in improved and more consistent response times and the ability to sustain higher workloads. It will be offered as an optional upgrade in the first quarter of 1989. In the fourth quarter of 1988, the 8890 Sybercache Disk Control Unit will be enhanced with an improved 4.5M-byte-per-second transfer rate option, improved cache management algorithms and a Sybercache Fast Write capability to improve performance. An enhanced version of the Sybercache Statistical Product licensed program that manages the 8890, promised for next quarter, will include active cache management, bind enhancements, command scheduling and a TSO Option) interface. The company has also announced a 4.5Mbyte per-second transfer rate on its 4305 and 4380 solid-state disk alternatives, which is claimed to improve throughput by over 30% when connected to IBM 3090 high-speed channels; all 4380 subsystems are field-upgradable to the faster transfer rate, as can 4305 subsystems with serial numbers of 4302001 and up. An extended limited lock facility feature to support Transaction Processing Facility will also be added to the for the semiconductor storage systems, and is claimed to offer significantly improved system performance over any other storage alternative requiring this feature under TPF. And for 1989, a quad-port disk subsystem is promised, and will be followed in 1990 by a new advanced control unit with full functionality of the new IBM 3990, plus additional features.
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