Intel's i960 digs deeper into server market

Electronic News, Feb 3, 1997 by Jim DeTar

Santa Clara, Calif.--Intel, in what can be viewed as a bid to drive the x86 architecture deeper into the server market once owned by high-end RISC processor vendors like Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, will today take the wraps off the i960 RD I/O microprocessor, a higher-speed I/O processor for Intel architecture-based standard, high-volume servers.

The i960 RD I/O co-processor--a follow-on product to the company's earlier-introduced i960 RP I/O processor (EN, Jan. 29, 1996)--is designed to implement the I2O architecture in servers and adapter cards. The Intelligent I/O (I2O) architecture is a common I/O framework that, among other things, provides a driver interface for servers and adapter cards. Intel is a founding member of the I2O special interest group (SIG), which counts more than 90 companies as members, up from the original 40 at the group's founding a year ago this month.

The new i960 RD I/O microprocessor also extends Intel's aging i960 architecture which some industry observers have contended Intel is gradually withdrawing from the market (EN, Jan. 27). The i960 RD is the second in a planned series of I/O processors and is aimed at applications such as Web servers, database servers, intranet servers and similar applications.

"Today's standard high-volume servers, like yesterday's mainframe computers, require intelligent I/O subsystems as an integral part of the system for providing the throughput and performance necessary in the enterprise," commented Ron Smith, Intel VP and GM of Intel's I/O processor unit, dubbed the Computing Enhancement Group.

Hewlett-Packard has benchmarked the i960 RD against the earlier introduced RP, according to Larry Shintaku, advanced development manager, HP Network Server Division. "In our initial testing, a single i960 RD processor benchmarked up to 50 percent higher performance over the i960 RP processor," Mr. Shintaku said.

Samples of the i960 RD I/O processor are available now, with production quantities slated for June 1997. The processor is priced at $79.75 per unit in 10,000-unit quantities.

Micronics Computers is the first system provider to incorporate the i960 RD I/O processor into its new M6Dpd motherboard, which is based on Intel's 440FX chipset and the Pentium Pro processor. It also supports Adaptec's Ultra Wide SCSI and RAIDport architectures and a 64-bit graphics adapter. "As central microprocessors such as Intel's Pentium Pro CPUs deliver ever-increasing power, servers are hindered by the input/output capability of the system," noted Shanker Munshani, president and CEO of Micronics. Networking vendor Novell is also committed to the i960 platform for its future server products as well.