tim@vicom.com (Tim Richardson) (06/12/90)
Is anyone currently using the new ESIA bus interface disk controller
from IBM... the one which their literature claims supports over 16Mbytes
per second? I'd like to correspond with anyone who is using it.
Pls reply directly to:
| ames!vsi1!tim tim@vicom.com
--
Tim Richardson
VP Engineering
(415) 498-3200poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) (06/13/90)
In article <1990Jun12.152437.18467@vicom.com> tim@vicom.com (Tim Richardson) writes: > >Is anyone currently using the new ESIA bus interface disk controller >from IBM... the one which their literature claims supports over 16Mbytes >per second? I'd like to correspond with anyone who is using it. >Pls reply directly to: > The problem here is that no disks are available that run that fast. The fastest commercially available disks are dual headed IPI-2 drives that can presently achieve 6Mb/s Russ Poffenberger DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies UUCP: {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276 San Jose, Ca. 95110 (408)437-5254
neese@adaptex.UUCP (06/14/90)
>>Is anyone currently using the new ESIA bus interface disk controller >>from IBM... the one which their literature claims supports over 16Mbytes >>per second? I'd like to correspond with anyone who is using it. >>Pls reply directly to: >> > The problem here is that no disks are available that run that fast. The >fastest commercially available disks are dual headed IPI-2 drives that can >presently achieve 6Mb/s Not that this answers the original posting, but.... This is quite correct. I kind of chuckle at the folks who buy a 32Bit EISA SCSI adapter and think they are going to get a big boost in performance. It just isn't going to happen until there are FAST (10MByte/sec) SCSI-2 drives. Now if they bought that EISA SCSI card and it can't support FAST SCSI-2, then they really did get screwed. Current SCSI technology can barely keep up with streaming data at 2MByte/sec, much less 10Mbytes/sec. At these speeds (2MB/sec), a 16bit board can more than keep up. For instance, our 154x board has the ability to move data across the AT bus at up to 10MBytes/sec. Even at the default speed of 5MByte/sec, the board is laying around waiting for the drive. Of course, it remains to be seen if the FAST SCSI-2 drives will be able to stream at 10MBytes/sec or simply burst at that speed. I suspect the latter to be true. They may only be able to stream at 5MBytes/sec. Still slow for a 32bit board which is capable of running at 32MBytes/sec. But relatively fast for a board that can only run at 10MBytes/sec. The point being, the 16Bit boards still haven't been fully exploited, so if you are the first on the block to have a 32Bit SCSI adapter, you will have only gained the fact that you were first. If that means a lot to you then you win, but if performance was what you were looking for, then you didn't gain much and spent a lot. Roy Neese Adaptec Senior SCSI Applications Engineer UUCP @ uunet!swbatl!texbell! {cpe,merch,nominil}!adaptex!neese uunet!mlite!adaptex!neese