Parallel SCSI Marketing Mtg

Jim McGrath jmcgrath at qntm.com
Mon Oct 9 16:22:08 PDT 1995


                      Subject:                              Time:  3:51 PM
  OFFICE MEMO         Parallel SCSI Marketing Mtg           Date:  10/9/95


Scheduled for Monday, October 16, at the Holiday Inn in Milpitas.
Previously the time was left undetermined.  I got feedback from
people both favoring a late start (so they can fly in that morning)
and a early ending (so they can leave early).  Since we have to pick
one or the other, I am setting 9:30 am, with a targeted close by 3pm.
We can have a working lunch.

On the agenda, here is a draft:

Introductions
Purpose of meeting - to guide technical work and provide vision for customers
Immediate priority - LVDS

Possible Focus Points:

Combinations of the following:

Speed: Fast-20, Fast-40, Fast-80 or 100
IO technology: LVDS only, SE only, Universal SE/LVDS
Hybrids (Universal only): control SE, data LVDS
     arbitration SE, the rest LVDS or SE, depending on the device

Thus there are 5 different signaling technologies and
3 speeds we could focus on, for 15 profiles.  Goal is
to identify the market driven priorities for the standards
work.

A number of other issues may be driven by these discussions, e.g
terminator availability, how to use old SE devices with these
new technologies.

As a starting point, Quantum is firmly in the Universal driver
camp, with Fast-40 being the primary speed target.  We can
see migrating to LVDS only over time (but it will be several years),
and definitely going to Fast-80/100.  We do not see any LVDS only
near term, and would like high speed SE to go away.

To do this we may have to force everyone to use SE for Arbitration
(probably selection/reselection).  If the two devices connected can
support LVDS, then they use that for the connection - otherwise SE.
This allows SE devices to be on a different connector than LVDS
devices, and allows a single host chip to be used (like the 2 cable
IDE).  It should be possible to put a system into purely LVDS mode
if there are no SE only devices on either connector or we have a
1 connector system.

Hybrid control SE/data LVDS is only there because of lindering
concerns over the availability of pins (and thus cost) for LVDS
on all lines in a drive ASIC.  I hope to have recent cost news on
this by the 16th.


we may have to 





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