NCR RAID business pushes ahead

Electronic News, Oct 31, 1994

WICHITA, KAN. -- With NCR Microelectronics up for sale by AT&T Global Information Solutions (EN, Sept. 5), one of the overlooked parts of the NCR division on the block is the OEM RAID business, which last week introduced a family of third-generation controller boards and subsystems.

Ron Engelbrecht, managing director of NCR RAID Technology, said that bundling the RAID unit along with NCR's semiconductor business has not proven to be a problem as AT&T sought buyers. One reason perhaps is that the RAID unit's I/O expertise could be leveraged by a buyer in other areas, such as host adapters, and tape and printer controllers. Or, semiconductor houses that have been increasingly involved in board-level manufacturing could see opportunities.

"All the bidders have been interested in us," said Mr. Engelbrecht, "if they weren't AT&T might have debundled us." According to industry sources, the buyer for NCR Microelectronics may surface by mid-November.

The Wichita, Kan. site is a 330,000-sq.-ft. building housing research and development, PC board design, subsystem assembly and marketing. Its manufacturing is done in South Carolina, however.

The RAID unit was put within NCR Microelectronics about a year ago as it sought more OEM business. NCR, which has introduced RAID chipsets for the OEM market, has been most successful at the controller board level; one reason is that OEMs are often reluctant to undertake the software development needed themselves, Mr. Engelbrecht said. Part of the RAID unit's new push also involves the subsystem area, and its new products have been designed from the ground up for OEM needs.

While Mr. Engelbrecht declined to name the companies, he said NCR currently supplies three of the top five system vendors with RAID products for some part of their offering. In the controller board space, NCR has largely been competing with Mylex and CMD while in the subsystem area it contends with Data General's Clariion product line and Digital Equipment Corp.'s Storage-Works division. The new redundant array of independent disks (RAID) products include the Series 3 controller family, $3,100, which leverages NCR's SCSI capabilities.

Next year the company will introduce Fast-20 SCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces on the controllers. NCR also has said it will support IBM's SSA standard but has not detailed its product plans.

The new 16-bit 20MB/s Series 3 Controllers' use Intel's 486 microprocessor and the PCI system bus. Previous NCR products were built around Motorola's 68K family of MPUs, but Mr. Engelbrecht said the company is now comfortable with a wide array of x86 suppliers as well as available development tools.

The Series 3 Expansion Module, $9,132, houses up to an additional 10 drives, and includes its own cooling mechanism. The Series 3 Subsystem starts at $18,400.