Corporate

Formed in 1992, the PCI-SIG is the industry organization chartered to develop and manage the PCI standard. With over 900 members, the PCI-SIG effectively places ownership and management of the PCI specifications in the hands of the developer community. A Board of Directors comprised of nine people, each elected by the membership, leads the PCI-SIG.

The PCI-SIG is chartered to:

• Maintain the forward compatibility of all PCI revisions or addenda
• Contribute to both the establishment of PCI as an industry-wide standard and to the technical longevity of the PCI architecture
• Maintain the PCI specification as a simple, easy-to-implement, stable technology that supports the spirit of its design

The PCI-SIG fulfills its charter by continuing to promote innovation and evolve the PCI standard to meet the industry's needs. Through interoperability testing, technical support, seminars and industry events, the PCI-SIG enables its members to generate competitive and quality products.

Incorporated in December 1997, the SNIA is a registered 501(c)6 non-profit trade association. Its members are dedicated to developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information.

The SNIA works toward this goal by forming and sponsoring Technical Work Groups (TWGs), producing (with its strategic partner Computerworld) the Storage Networking World Conference series, building and maintaining a vendor neutral Technology Center in Colorado Springs, and promoting activities that expand the breadth and quality of the storage and information management market. The SNIA's ability to accomplish these goals is directly attributed to the dedication and hard work of hundreds of volunteers from its member companies.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the SNIA also has offices in its Colorado Springs-based Technology Center. With seven regional affiliates spanning the globe, SNIA is truly the voice of the storage industry on a worldwide scale.

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is the logical evolution of SCSI, retaining SCSI's long-established software advantage. In addition, the Serial ATA (SATA) electrical and physical connection interface, which has much smaller connectors and cables, benefits SAS with greater system cooling and lower system cost. With enterprise storage requirements escalating and becoming more complex, factors such as larger capacity, greater density, security, scalability and accessibility are more critical than ever. Enterprise data centers must be online all the time, fulfill requests from numerous users simultaneously, allow for constant growth and expansion and be maintained during operation. SAS meets all of these demands while providing the highest performance. Aligning SAS and SATA technologies to serve storage users who need large capacities at a lower cost provides greater choice to the industry.

3Gb/s SAS Definition

The first generation, 3Gb/s SAS, replaces parallel SCSI which could no longer keep pace with industry performance and scalability demands. SAS fulfilled the storage industry's need for faster systems with more advanced capabilities. SAS features which support faster performance include dual-port drives and wide ports, enabling full-duplex data transmission plus aggregated bandwidth. Universal connectivity is an added SAS advantage.

6Gb/s SAS Definition

6Gb/s SAS has many enhancements beyond 3Gb/s SAS. It has more bandwidth per connection, greater scalability, and enhanced features. 3Gb/s SAS usage models will be preserved in 6Gb/s SAS along with the retention of 1.5 Gb/s and 3Gb/s SAS/SATA compatibility. There are many other targeted improvements beyond first generation 3Gb/s SAS, assuring enterprise storage users that SAS technology will continue to meet their needs.

The objective of the Storage Bridge Bay Working Group (SBB) is to create a specification that defines mechanical, electrical and low-level enclosure management requirements for an enclosure controller slot that will support a variety of storage controllers from a variety of independent hardware vendors ("IHVs") and system vendors. Any storage controller design based on the SBB specification will be able to fit, connect, and operate within any storage enclosure controller slot design based on the same specification.

Standardization based on the SBB specification will benefit both IHVs and system vendors. IHVs can create a single controller design, based on the SBB specification, which is compatible with a number of disk enclosures, resulting in lower development costs. System vendors can devote more of their resources on innovation and simplicity as a result of the shorter development time enabled by SBB standardization. SBB standardization will speed the delivery of emerging storage technologies, such as iSCSI (Internet small computer systems interface), SAS (serial attached SCSI), archiving and virtual tape libraries.Decreased cost and faster access to new storage technology are two anticipated benefits for customers as a result of engineering and design process improvements based on SBB standardization. More customers will have an opportunity to deploy advanced storage capabilities, which were previously limited to enterprise-class solutions.