New storage technology, ThinkPads from IBM

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): For many years, Big Blue (IBM) has been among the contributors to the Olympic Games. This year, it is supplying its technology and solutions in an effort to make the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games the most efficient and accessible games to date. In line with this, from now until October, visitors to the Inforum -- the Atlanta Committee of Olympic Games headquarters -- can view and learn about all the equipment that IBM is deploying for the event. The exhibition is called the "IBM Olympic Information Technology Showcase."

An exhibition of actual solutions such as this is always a great idea, since visitors can look at and see for themselves what technologies they may adopt to meet the needs of their own business organizations.

Specifically, for the upcoming Olympic games, IBM has developed four major solutions. First, there will be the Results Systems, which will track scores and statistics for 271 events at 31 separate venues. Second, there will be the Info *96 System, which provides instant logistical, factual and biographical data to accredited guests. Then there is the Games Management System (what a choice of name!), which consists of a group of sophisticated, interconnected applications that manages entire events. And there will also be the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games Web Server, the first official home page for the Olympic Games. With the new home page, web surfers will be able to have instant access to real-time results as well as pictures, graphics, and Olympic Games facts.

In addition, there will also be a virtual reality project and a Lotus Notes-based Incident Tracking System. The former is an application that features an IBM 3-D Interaction Accelerator that will enable real-time visualization and a "tour" of the venues. The latter is supposed to help enhance Games security by tracking, monitoring and coordinating responses to security incidents.

So, if you happen to be in Atlanta within the next five months and want to find out how IBM's technologies might help your business, just drop by. In the meantime, here are some new products from this computer giant that you might like to know about.

SSA for SCSI

Talk about the highest performance you'd want from a storage subsystem, and you'll unavoidably find yourself talking about the SCSI interface. As I already discussed some time ago, the technology has grown more mature, and we're beginning to see PCs with fast and wide SCSI implementation on the market.

Yet, like most other mature technologies in the computer industry, SCSI will soon have a strong contender: The Serial Storage Architecture, or SSA. Pioneered by IBM, the new architecture is now being offered to RS 6000 machines. However, as Julia Lee from IBM's Storage Division informed me last week, we will soon see its implementation on the PC platform as well.

What are the advantages? To begin with, with two data paths between any two nodes, SSA offers a higher bandwidth -- the maximum being 20 MBps. You can also connect up to 127 devices in a single loop, which far exceeds SCSI. In addition, you also have a flexible loop connectivity that theoretically will give you the ability to connect up to two million devices to your system.

I was also informed that it would be possible for an SSA-based storage device to be accessed by more than one CPU. That's something new. Normally, we have one CPU with the capability of accessing a multiple storage device. Now it will be the other way around. It means that copies of the same data won't have to be stored in different places and this, in turn, will also eliminate the task of synchronization (making sure that all copies are the most current).

Then there are other additional features, such as hot pluggability, which is actually already available in a RAID subsystem. But the next advantage is perhaps a boon to the network manager: The link between one device and another can be as long as 25 meters, and the connection uses only a shielded twisted pair cable. These features are clearly more flexible than SCSI.

SSA has been recognized by leading computer and peripheral companies, including Adaptec, Fujitsu, and Siemens Nixdorf. Because of the level of flexibility and performance that it promises, we really have to stay tuned for more news about SSA.

New ThinkPads

IBM's notebooks, called ThinkPads, may not be selling like hot cakes here in Jakarta, but they definitely have solid quality and bear reasonable price tags. A new generation of entry-level ThinkPads are based on the Cyrix processors, which IBM manufactures in its own facility. The Cyrix MISC 100 MHz chip is positioned to compete with the Intel 75 MHz Pentium, so a ThinkPad using this CPU is supposed to perform as well as my newly acquired Toshiba Satellite 100CS. I was told that one of the reasons for using the Cyrix processor is their price, which is much lower than that of the Intel Pentium, and this is going to be reflected in the amount of money a user will have to pay. Unfortunately, as these models have just been launched here, no pricing is available yet.

The Cyrix-based ThinkPads come with an ISA bus. Other features that the Satellite 100CS boasts can also be found in ThinkPads 365E and 365ED, including two Type II (equivalent to one Type III) PC Card slots, a TrackPoint III pointing device, a 540 MB hard disk, 8 MB RAM, and a 10.4" dual scan screen (there's also a 365E that comes equipped with a TFT screen). The ThinkPad 365ED comes with a built-in CD-ROM drive, and therefore an external disk drive. It also comes with a built-in SoundBlaster Pro- compatible sound card. Surprisingly, the CD-ROM equipped model comes only with a dual scan display.

There's another thing that surprises me: IBM has not redesigned the keyboard of ThinkPad 365, despite the fact that most other new notebooks now have wrist supports on the bottom of their keyboards. IBM does offer a port replicator for these models, which will give us the wrist support. Still another surprise is that these ThinkPads still do not use EDO RAM.

For those who are too Intel-fanatic to use processors from any other vendor, IBM offers ThinkPads 365X and 365XD. These notebooks use Intel 100 MHz Pentium chips, and come with a 810 MB hard disk, a 10.4" dual scan SVGA display, 16-bit sound capability, speaker and microphone. The 365XD, as the name indicates, comes with a CD ROM drive. A 120 MHz version of the 365XD has a 11.3" dual scan SVGA screen and a 1 GB hard disk. By the way, all of the new ThinkPads are already equipped with an infrared port.

From time to time, I have referred to the ThinkPad 760 series as the ultimate in notebook computing, hoping that one day I would be able to conduct a hands-on test on this much-raved-about desktop power for the road. However, PT USI Jaya, IBM's agent for Indonesia, has been unable to provide me with a demo unit, so I can only talk about it from what I've read in computer magazines.

Yet, before I got the chance to really play around with this expensive notebook, its new siblings have arrived, four of them altogether: ThinkPads 760E, 760ED, 760 EL, and 760ELD. Like the 365 Series, they were all launched here last week. The ThinkPad 760ED has the most features in this class. You can choose from Intel 100 MHz, 120 MHz, or 133 MHz Pentium processors.

All of them have a gorgeous 12.1" TFT black active matrix display, sound capability with built-in stereo speakers and microphone, wrist support, TrackPoint III, and a keyboard that tilts up when opened. They also use EDO RAM, using a Dual in-line memory module, or DIMM.

The ones with the L in their names carry lower price tags, because, among other things, they don't have the L2 cache. That's a surprising omission, since, as we all know, the performance of a Pentium system is significantly affected by absence or presence of the L2 cache. No doubt about it, the L series is targeted to those who still have "some" limitation in their budget.

PT USI Jaya has promised to let me test-drive one of these high-end notebooks as soon as they can get hold of an extra demo unit. Hopefully, then, I will be able to provide you with a more specific account of this dream portable machine.