Future Watch

December 19 96 / Bits / Future Watch

Super-Storage for the Next Century

A new storage and networking standard that combines the best of the competing Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) and Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) standards could reign as the supreme Ultra-SCSI replacement. Commercial products based on the proposed interface may appear in 1998 or 1999. A proposal for Fibre Channel-Enhanced Loop (FC-EL) was expected to be made to the American National Standards Institute in October.
The new universal interface wil probably combine transport-layer attributes from the current SSA standard, such as the ability to allow several data transfers to occur at once, with a 1-Gbps interface. FC-EL proponents say the new standard will eliminate confusion over which serial storage technology will prevail. "FC-EL truly brings the best of both worlds tog ether," says Roger Nixon of Xyratex's Storage Solutions Group (Havant, Hampshire, U.K., +44 1705 486 363), which sells SSA storage systems and will release FC-AL products in 1997.

Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it is theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.

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