My area of research is advanced driver methods with a focus on very high I/O performance in very large (> 500 disks) systems using Fibre Channel solutions for Windows NT.

As Windows NT enterprise computing solutions are delivered on larger and larger servers, we are finding that present day technology is not capable of meeting the I/O requirements.

SCSI solutions are quickly running out of steam. Even on the Wide Ultra SCSI bus, the technology is becoming a bottle-neck. In order to configure large servers that have reasonable I/O throughput you are forced to use up many of the available PCI slots and IRQ's supporting SCSI adapters. Cabling of large disk farms is becoming increasingly difficult.

Fibre Channel is a solution that addresses many of the short-comings of present day SCSI I/O solutions. Being an emerging technology, there are many opportunities for improving the performance of the Fibre Channel solution by targeting the drivers that support the Fibre Channel adapters.

Dave Waser (waser@dg-rtp.dg.com)

Data General Corporation
62 TW Alexander Dr.
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

Phone: 919 - 248 - 5955