Trebia Trumpets iSCSI Test

Storage processor startup Trebia Networks Inc. is claiming that its SNP-1000 chip is not only the fastest on the planet when it comes to Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP), but that it also now holds a new world record for SCSI over IP (iSCSI). But there's still a question of whether the company can stick around long enough to capitalize on its supposedly blazingly-fast technology (see Trebia Sets iSCSI Record).

Since last month, when Trebia announced that its silicon had topped 300,000 I/O operations per second (IOPS) on an FCIP test, the startup has added firmware to the product allowing it to reach nearly the same performance for iSCSI (see Is Trebia Up for Sale?). The company claims that its in-house iSCSI test results show 245,000 IOPS across two ports and 452-Mbyte/s throughput -- a new industry benchmark for performance.

"Having leading performance and having dual-port capability definitely gives us an advantage... so we can win in the iSCSI market place," says Trebia director of marketing George Harper.

If Trebias numbers check out, they far surpass the 92,000 IOPS performance announced by competitor Silverback Systems Inc. in March (see Silverback Makes iSCSI Howl).

But Silverback officials insist that the results are not comparable, since Trebia's test did not go across a PCI backplane to convert memory. "They just converted from Fibre Channel to iSCSI," says Mike Strickland, director of marketing at Silverback. "They never went to a host... At the end of the day, data originates somewhere and terminates somewhere."Trebia's Harper, however, says that the SNP-1000 delivers very low CPU utilization. "It provides more than enough iSCSI hauling capacity to match FC endpoint performance, with negligible additional host CPU load," he says, insisting that utilization of the CPU is less than 1 percent.

Analysts say Trebia's testing indicates that it has developed IP storage technology that matches, or outruns, traditional Fibre Channel. Concerns over slower performance and bottlenecks have been a hindrance to migration from Fibre Channel technology to cheaper iSCSI, says Jag Bolaria, a senior analyst with the The Linley Group.

"This is significant in the sense that it says we’re able to provide the same performance as Fibre Channel, and at a good price point," he says.

But no matter how great the performance is, he continues, mass adoption of iSCSI is still a ways away. "Right now, there’s not a whole bunch of volume in iSCSI," he says. "The whole iSCSI house hasn’t come together yet. The volume ramp on that probably won’t happen before the second half of 2004."

That's a serious concern for the Acton, Mass.-based startup, whose VCs had been rumored to be seeking a buyer as recently as a few months ago. The company has since announced that it received more funding from its existing investors and hired a new CEO, Ruediger "Rudi" Stroh. A shakeup at Trebia in February resulted in the departure of much of the previous management team, including former CEO Bob Conrad (see Trebia Ousts CEO and Trebia Gets Second Wind).Stroh, however, maintains that Trebia now has the capital to achieve its product-delivery and financial goals. "We have enough money in the bank to execute on our projects... for both the switch and the end-point markets," he told Byte and Switch earlier this month. The company will evaluate whether it needs to seek additional funds toward the end of 2003, he said.

Trebia is now trying to accelerate its time to market by trying to convince its partners that they can simply iSCSI-enable their existing Fibre Channel products using one of its chips. The company says that instead of building a native iSCSI solution, companies can simply slap an SNP-1000 in front of a typical 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel interface, and -- voilà! -- instant iSCSI.

"All of a sudden, you have two iSCSI ports, without having to redesign that whole subsystem," Harper says. "There’s a lot of interest in this product as a great time-to-market solution."

Trebia conducted the test in the same environment it used for its FCIP test last month, composed of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) and McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA) switches connected with Linux servers, and all available industry-standard targets. The only difference this time around was that Trebia enabled the part of the chip’s firmware that supports iSCSI rather than FCIP, thus converting Fibre Channel to iSCSI, and vice versa.

Also added to the mix was full iSCSI header and data digest protection. Trebia claims that the test is the first to take into account this feature, which verifies that both the data and its header have not been altered under transport. Adding the feature to the test is important, Harper says, because any company using iSCSI would certainly use it to certify the integrity of its data. Since systems can experience significant slowdowns when supporting header and data digest functions, test results not taking them into account simply don’t correspond to real-world usage, he says. "We think it’s absolutely critical."So far, Trebia has announced two customers for its SNP-1000 chips: LSI Logic Corp. (NYSE: LSI) and McData. The chips are priced at $335 each in volume in the switch incarnation.

— Eugénie Larson, Reporter, Byte and Switch