ACADEMIA

Fusion-io announced that it is actively participating with the SCSI Trade Association (STA), a member-run industry association established to support and promote SCSI technology, to develop and market the open SCSI Express industry standard for PCI Express based storage. By leveraging PCIe connections in the server with a focus on NAND flash technologies, the standard will provide organizations with more options for integrating performance storage solutions into their datacenters. Fusion-io will also join in the upcoming SCSI Trade Association Technology Showcase, "Taming the Data Beast!" on Wednesday, May 9 in Santa Clara.

"STA is pleased with the decision of Fusion-io to join STA in helping drive SCSI Express as open industry standard for PCIe based storage," stated Harry Mason president of STA. "Given Fusion's rich heritage in delivering innovative NAND flash solutions to the market, their contributions will be important in shaping the final outcome of the initiative."

SCSI Express comprises a set of technologies designed to deliver an enterprise storage solution based on PCI Express, including the SCSI over PCIe (SOP) protocol, the PCIe architecture Queuing Interface (PQI), a universal drive connector focused on 2.5-inch platforms, the PCIe physical layer and OS support. To help develop open standards for SCSI Express, Fusion-io will participate in the T10 Technical Committees, which are responsible for standardizing the foundation SCSI technologies.

The T10 Committee's work on the logical SCSI protocol, transport and delivery standards will provide the basis for SCSI Express standardization. SCSI Express utilizes the SCSI over PCIe and the PCI Express architecture queuing interface model being defined within the T10 Committee. The T10 standardization efforts will become the basis of SCSI Express, which in turn is defined and marketed by the SCSI Trade Association. Fusion-io was the first company to integrate server-based NAND flash via the PCI Express bus. Through the PCIe interface, Fusion's sophisticated ioMemory software architecture can significantly reduce the I/O barriers that otherwise limit CPUs in modern datacenters.

"Originally previewed at HP Discover, an ioMemory-based 2.5-inch form factor drive connected to a 2U HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 server via SCSI Express will be demonstrated in a technology preview at the upcoming SCSI Trade Association Technology Showcase, and we are proud to be continuing our work with STA members and the T10 committee to help shape the open SCSI Express standard," said Gary Orenstein, Fusion-io Vice President of Products. "We believe that SCSI Express will be adopted as a leading standard for PCI Express deployments. We look forward to collaborating with fellow STA members and leading SCSI experts to share our expertise in this area to provide open standards as organizations modernize IT infrastructure by eliminating legacy storage interfaces and move data performance closer to the host processors."