IBM offers industry's first disk storage subsystem based on Serial Storage Architecture ; 7133 Subsystem Provides High-Performance, Low-Cost Alternative to SCSI Interface

Business Wire, July 25, 1995

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 25, 1995--IBM today announced the industry's first storage subsystem to implement Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) -- the new industry standard for high-speed, low-cost transfer of data between computer processors and storage devices such as hard disk drives, CD-ROMs and tape drives.

The new IBM 7133 Serial Storage Architecture Disk Subsystem -- using IBM's advanced 3.5-inch disk drive technology -- is offered for attachment to IBM's RISC System/6000 servers and RS/6000 Scalable POWERparallel Systems. It is scheduled to be generally available for use with IBM's AIX 3.2.5 operating system by August 11. IBM intends to provide support for AIX 4.1 by the end of the year.

As an indication of the widespread interest among computer users in testing SSA benefits in their own environments, almost 5 trillion characters (terabytes) of 7133 storage capacity have already been shipped to users at 38 sites in eight countries. These include customers participating in a field-test program that began in the second quarter of this year, as well as IBM benchmarking centers.

The 7133 Subsystem provides higher levels of performance, fault tolerance, data availability and connectivity than is possible with similar SCSI-based storage. It is ideally suited for storage of data in the RS/6000 environment.

"IBM's announcement of the 7133 SSA subsystem is an important milestone," said Robert Selinger, president of the SSA Industry Association (SSA-IA) and director of input/output technology at Adaptec, Inc. "Many SSA-IA members, including IBM, have previously announced SSA components and products. Now, with a full SSA subsystem from IBM entering the marketplace, we expect to see the pace of system introductions accelerate." -0-

            SSA OVERCOMES SCSI PERFORMANCE BOTTLENECK