Symbios Logic makes Fibre Channel IC bid

Electronic News, April 7, 1997

The SYM40940 adapter centers on the SYMFC920 Fibre Channel protocol controller chip, which combines transmit and receive functions along with the protocol control functions on the same chip, a trend silicon vendors are following to drive down the cost of Fibre Channel. Symbios designed the controller chip to require minimal support logic--i.e., memory, clocks and a gigabit-speed physical interface--resulting in a fairly simple adapter board design.

Fibre Channel storage device suppliers are calling the rollout a significant step in the market emergence of the FC-AL interface. "The need for full-speed FC-AL host adapters continues to grow, and Symbios Logic's offering is an important stepping stone for customers beginning the transition to the serial interface," said Mike Fitzpatrick, chairman of the Fibre Channel Loop Committee and product marketing manager for Seagate Technology, which is leading the FC-AL disk drive momentum. Other drive vendors are expected to ship volume Fibre Channel products later this year.

Symbios will introduce the SYMFC920 controller at a $300 unit price, packaged in a 352-pin ball grid array. The chip itself is built on a four-layer substrate in 3.3-volt CMOS, and is designed to dissipate a low 2.5 watts.

The 5-volt SYM40940 board supports a 200 megabytes-per-second full-duplex data rate on a Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL), and is unit priced for $850. Quantity shipments of both products are expected in 3Q97, although development parts are in the hands of partners, according to the company.

Marty Francis, diretor of strategic marketing for Symbios Logic's storage systems and Fibre Channel group, commented: "In order to enable users to transition to Fibre Channel, it's essential for Symbios Logic to ease the integration work and reduce the risk to systems developers. The industry standard I2O-ready SYM40940 solution does just that."

Fibre Channel is being used mainly to target mainframe server storage, such as RAID or, redundant disk arrays; however, there is some momentum toward adopting the technology as a gigabit backbone for "clustering," or server/storage networks. The advantage of Fibre Channel is its ability to handle a lot of devices--up to 126, versus 15 connections using Ultra SCSI--at distances up to 30 meters with copper and 10 kilometers with optical transceivers.

Though still shipping in low volumes, Fibre Channel is poised to experience tremendous uptake as multimedia workgroup applications drive the server market to new highs. Growing driver support from operating system vendors including Novell, Microsoft and Santa Cruz Operation, should help accelerate adoption as well.

According to Dataquest, Fibre Channel adoption will pick up steam in 1998 and beyond in the PC server and mid-range workstation server segments, and begin to inch its way into the traditional SCSI space. According to International Data Corp., 1998 Fibre Channel shipments will approach the 2 million mark and reach 6 million by 2000.