SiliconTCP, EtherSAN, and Scalability
Everyone says I was amazingly ahead of my time. As Rick Merritt, EE Times writes about the possibility of using storage interconnects concluding "Competitors such as Broadcom Corp., which have existing 1-Gbit R-NICs, will not be able to scale to the greater bandwidth because they lack the ASIC state machine architecture...".
Well, now I'm pleased that I wrote a paper for the global storage network workshop last MayAll You Need is TCP: EtherSAN and Storage Networks, and even more grateful for the feedback I received from people like Jim Grey of Microsoft, John Wakerly of Cisco, and Greg Pfister of IBM. Gordon Bell was an earlier advocate of the InterProphet technology and urged Chuck Thacker to take a look at it several years ago. So it appears this is finally becoming a topic of serious consideration - although I've been seeing it coming for many years.
The fundamental scalable state machine architecture patent ("TCP/IP network accelerator system and method which identifies classes of packet traffic for predictable protocols") was filed in 1997 and granted 2000. A term memory patent ("Term Addressable Memory of an Accelerator System and Method was independently filed and granted July of 2004. It's a better memory approach that hand-in-glove with a state machine architecture that deals with certain flaws.
While these guys are hoping to use an interconnect to scalably use RDMA over TCP (something we discussed doing in 1999), they're not there yet. Why? Simple - if you read the other patents in this area, the "expert" opinion is you can't use a traditional CAM or a ternary CAM. That's what they're using. So you don't have to believe me - you can believe the other guys.
I've been told I should be getting a parchment shortly for my work on SiliconTCP and low power in cellular / WiFi. That got me thinking ahead of where we'd be this time next year, or maybe the year after. Four years ago when I was in a meeting at Cisco, I was told by the M&A group that low power wasn't important, and neither was storage. Now Cisco is moving heavily into storage. Is low power far behind?
Perhaps the toughest audience any technologist in a complex business has to face is the impatient investor. I've met VCs who expect to "get it" in one minute missing seconds, claiming they are such geniuses they understand everything. It's important to speak to someone who really understand the area, and is willing to do their work. These one-minute wonders are definitely bad news to a serious business.
It's been suggested that I just write a new EtherSAN paper that drills down more. Well, as more people validate this area, I believe I will. You see, being first isn't alway an advantage if others can't see the crest of the wave in the distance. If I did use the scalable state machine approach, which I shied away before from as a description (except in patents of course) because "nobody gets it", do you think they might finally get it now? Because that's what I see the other guys starting to say. All I can say in response is "Better late than never".