Compaq's Hot Plug PCI Enables On-Line I/O Replacement Improving Enterprise Server Availability; Compaq Partners with Leading Vendors Chairs New PCI SIG Workgroup To Develop Open Industry Standard

Business Wire, June 24, 1996

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 24, 1996 - Maintaining its commitment in industry-standard, high-availability solutions, Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ) -- the world's leading server vendor -- today announced its strategic roadmap to enable the development of an open industry-standard specification for Hot Plug PCI technology. Hot Plug PCI will provide customers increased system availability and non-stop serviceability in business critical computing environments. In its dedication to open standards, Compaq is working with key industry vendors to facilitate a standard for Hot Plug PCI technology. Part of this effort includes the establishment of a PCI SIG workgroup to create a recognized standard for Hot Plug PCI technology. This technology will allow customers to expand, upgrade, or replace PCI cards without taking the server off-line. Initially, Hot Plug PCI will allow customers to replace failed or pre-failure PCI cards without taking a server down. Later, Hot Plug PCI upgradeability and expansion -- which are also to be part of the workgroup's proposed specification -- will give customers even greater flexibility as their needs grow. As chair of the workgroup, Compaq will propose that a standard be established in the same manner as the original PCI specification to help bring product to market faster. The PCI SIG developed version 2.1 of the industry's open standard PCI specification. Compaq, one of the five founding member organizations, will work with other members of the PCI SIG Steering Committee and Hot Plug PCI workgroup to identify requirements for the Hot Plug PCI specification.

Compaq's own solution will consist of both hardware and software being developed in conjunction with leading operating system vendors, independent hardware vendors (IHV), and semiconductor manufacturers to meet customers' needs for high-availability and fault tolerance in distributed enterprise environments. Compaq plans to introduce the first implementation of Hot-Plug PCI technology -- Hot PCI Replacement -- in the first half of 1997.

Technology Roadmap

The first implementation of Hot Plug PCI -- Hot Plug PCI Replacement -- will enable users to replace a failed or pre-failure device card without taking the server off-line and incurring costly system downtime. Users equipped with redundant PCI connections and network failover capabilities will be able to maintain user connections and services while the I/O problem is being rectified. Follow-on products will include Hot PCI Upgrade and Hot PCI Expansion. Hot PCI Upgrade will allow users to upgrade existing PCI devices and drivers with new versions without system downtime. Similarly, Hot PCI Expansion will permit users to install additional previously uninstalled I/O cards and driver software without taking the server off-line.

Compaq's decision to develop Hot Plug PCI technology is focused on addressing a key customer issue: as computing environments grow more complex, the business costs of unplanned system downtime are soaring. According to a 1994 Gartner Group study(1), companies stand to lose as much as $250K in employee productivity for every one percent of system downtime. The increasing financial stakes of unplanned downtime in business-critical environments, which are compounded by the time spent tracking the source of network or component failures, are creating a greater need for high- availability solutions -- like Hot Plug PCI -- that are immune to subsystem failures.

"As companies continue to move business-critical applications to networks based on industry standard platforms, they are requiring the same levels of availability and fault tolerance found on more costly, proprietary platforms," said Gary Stimac, senior vice president and general manager, Compaq Systems Division. "By driving the development of a Hot-Plug PCI industry standard, Compaq is extending its leadership in delivering enterprise-class high- availability solutions and leveraging its partnerships to bring innovative new technology to market that meets our customers needs, and can be used as a universal solution across the industry. In fact, Hot Plug PCI technology surpasses current midrange offerings and demonstrates Compaq's prowess to meet the company's objectives of becoming the safe alternative to traditional costly proprietary midrange platforms. In addition to bringing value-added technologies to market quicker, Compaq is also focusing on customer investment protection by proposing that the specification ensure Hot Plug PCI is fully backwards compatible with today's PCI cards. Compaq is also proposing to make it possible for today's PCI cards to gain hot plug capability through software enhancement."

Hot Plug PCI enhances Compaq's portfolio of industry leading high availability solutions delivered to date, which include RAID, hot plug hard drives, redundant power supplies, and Server Array Clustering solutions such as Standby Recovery Server and On-Line Recovery Server. Later this year, Compaq will introduce another component of its new server clustering solution for Microsoft Windows NT Server based on ServerNet interconnect technology from Tandem. This follows Compaq's continued participation as a core partner in helping Microsoft develop its WolfPack technology, a standard for Windows NT Server clustering, scheduled for availability in the first quarter of 1997. Compaq also recently introduced several new high- availability solutions including Remote Insight Board and Redundant Netelligent NICs. Compaq Remote Insight Board is a hardware and software independent solution that provides uninterruptible server access and alerting functions for remote locations. Redundant Netelligent NICs ensure users do not lose their network connection in the event of a NIC failure.