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FCIA RATIFIES STANDARD FOR 8Gbs FABRICS

The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) and its sister association, the Fibre Channel Industry Association-Japan (FCIA-J), announced that its members have ratified the extension of the Fibre Channel roadmap to extend 8Gbs Fibre Channel from an "inside the box" storage device interconnect into switched SAN fabrics. The Fibre Channel industry is now positioned to help customers preserve their 2Gbs Fibre Channel (2GFC) and 4Gbs Fibre Channel (4GFC) infrastructure investments and avoid costly 'fork lift' replacements. The vote supports the ANSI INCITS T11 Technical Committee development of the 8Gbs Fibre Channel (8GFC) electrical copper and optical interfaces in its FC-PI-4 standard and ensures that Fibre Channel continues to provide the highest performance available for storage interconnects.

Cost Effective Fibre Channel Migration Preserves Current Investments

While noting that its member companies are at the present time introducing new families of 4GFC and 10GFC products to the market, the FCIA explained that there is value in sharing the roadmap with customers. They can use the information that it contains on future product directions to plan a smooth migration to higher speed products when they become available with assurances that continued Fibre Channel investments will be completely cost effective, and backward compatible with legacy Fibre Channel products. When 8GFC products become available, expected to be in the 2007-2008 time frame, customers will be able to preserve their 2GFC and 4GFC infrastructure investments and avoid a costly "fork lift" replacement. The "auto-negotiation" feature of Fibre Channel enables 8GFC products to automatically sense and adapt to the data rate capability of connected lower speed Fibre Channel products without user intervention. For example, when attaching to a 4GFC product, an 8GFC product will automatically run at 4GFC. 4GFC products will be introduced this year. It is anticipated that they will enjoy broad market acceptance over the next several years as Fibre Channel continues to be the storage and SAN interconnect of choice throughout all small and large businesses.

"We are pleased that the FCIA has once again helped prevent industry fragmentation by providing a clear and concise roadmap for future Fibre Channel migration as well as providing invaluable market feedback into the Fibre Channel standards community. With 8GFC on the roadmap, Fibre Channel's future is ensured by meeting future performance demands while preserving the current and ongoing investments that users make in the technology. Our roadmap enables suppliers and users to plan future products and architectures that complement the proven track record of Fibre Channel applications. Providing all the benefits of full backward compatibility to the large, rapidly growing Fibre Channel installed base, 8GFC will deliver the most cost-effective, highest performance for SAN applications," said Skip Jones, chairman of the Fibre Channel Industry Association Speed Forum Committee.

"The vote for 8GFC fabric is a watershed event for the entire SAN industry including manufacturers, distributors, VARs and end-users," said Frank Berry, vice president of marketing at QLogic Corp. "Manufacturers can now move full-speed ahead in one direction that is based on standards, while end-users are ensured of the backwards compatibility they need to protect their SAN investments. The vote also demonstrates the importance of the FCIA to the SAN industry."

"As a market leader in Fibre Channel solutions, LSI Logic is investing R&D dollars in developing a broad range of ASIC CoreWare(R) and storage standard products to support advances in storage interconnection technology. We will continue to leverage our position as a driver of industry standards to be a leader in the 8GFC market, as we have in previous generations," said Dave Jones, vice president and general manager of LSI Logic's Storage ASICs division.

"As the world leader in networking technology, Cisco has always been a strong proponent of industry standards. Extending the 8GFC standard, with its higher performance and backward compatibility, to fabric applications will help ensure that users have a strong future growth path for their Fibre Channel storage networks while preserving their investment in current technology," said Ed Chapman, senior director of product management in Cisco's Storage Business Unit. "Offering customers the utmost flexibility for designing their SANs, the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of switches has been built to support any number of existing and future storage transport protocols. Similar to our support for 4GFC, which we expect to deliver in calendar year 2005, Cisco will provide support for 8GFC as market demand warrants."

"The addition of 8GFC as the next step in a fully compatible line of link technologies demonstrates the continued aggressive developments planned for Fibre Channel." said Jay Kidd, CTO of Brocade Communications Systems. "As faster server and faster storage devices come to market, Fibre Channel is evolving in a cost effective, backwards compatible manner to meet real customer needs from entry to enterprise applications."