De EETimes schrijft dat een spin-off bedrijfje van Western Digital met de naam Aristos, een chip uitbrengt die de volgende stap moet vormen in de ontwikkeling van Fibre Channel Raid. De controller wordt nu nog gesampled maar zal begin 2003 naar de grote OEM's verscheept worden. De FibreSlice, zoals de chip heet, is tien keer sneller dan de general purpose controllers die men op dit moment veelal in Fibre Channel oplossingen tegenkomt. Tien core chips met een onderlinge taakverdeling kunnen worden gevoed door drie 2Gbit/s FC-interfaces. Met nieuwe technieken als deze kunnen Storage Area Networks nog sneller dan snel gemaakt worden, maar alternatieven als iSCSI en (10) Gigabit Ethernet liggen op de loer:
Aristos stands apart from a host of other storage network startups by pursuing a demonstrated market for Fibre Channel RAID controllers. Others, including Trebia Networks Inc. and Silverback Systems Inc., are aiming for next-generation storage systems and their expected migration to Gigabit Ethernet and iSCSI.
But the iSCSI transition is going slower than once expected for two reasons. Gigabit Ethernet requires still expensive hardware acceleration for TCP offload and remote direct memory access features to hit its full performance capabilities. And the downturn has generally slowed business spending on storage networks, and has thus slowed the expected transition to Ethernet.
"A couple of our customers that once said Gigabit Ethernet support was a must have backed off and now say they will wait for 10-Gigabit Ethernet," said Acosta. "We don't see iSCSI as being a high volume market in the short term. But at 10G, it will be a whole new ball game."
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