First Public Demo Underscores Reality of Industry Standard
Hardware Driver Interface
SANTA CRUZ, Calif., SCO FORUM98, Aug. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- At SCO Forum98
today, SCO (Nasdaq: SCOC) and other industry members of Project UDI (Uniform
Driver Interface) demonstrated the same device driver running on multiple
operating systems from different vendors. The demonstration, the first major
step toward an industry standard hardware driver interface, underscored the
reality of a cross-OS, cross-platform portable device driver, one of the goals
of Project UDI, an open industry forum.
In the first public demonstration ever, the driver ran under SCO UnixWare
2, UnixWare 7, and Hewlett-Packard HP-UX simply by recompiling identical
driver source code. The driver has also been tested under Compaq's Digital
UNIX, and IBM AIX, and Solaris from SUN Microsystems, covering a wide range of
processor families, including Intel IA32 (x86), Alpha, PA-RISC, PowerPC, and
others. The tests ensure compatibility with both 64-bit and 32-bit CPUs, big
and little endian byte orders, and strong and weak memory ordering. UDI
currently supports SCSI Host Bus Adapters and Network Interface Cards, with
pointing devices, Fibre Channel, USB, and I2O on the way.
The Need for a Portable Driver
A portable driver approach is critical to solving "the driver problem."
Operating system vendors can't afford to write drivers for all the hardware
that they need to support, and so in many cases look to the Independent
Hardware Vendors (IHVs) that supply the hardware to write these drivers for
them. But IHVs can't afford to write drivers for all operating systems for
each of their devices in time to meet market demands. The UDI model solves
this problem by allowing a single driver to support multiple operating
systems. IHVs can increase the number of operating systems to which they give
priority, and at the same time free up resources to concentrate on innovation.
SCO and Project UDI Blaze Trail Toward Future
SCO sees UDI as next-generation I/O technology that enables a broad range
of products and hardware technologies. SCO continues to work with Project UDI
to advance this technology and move toward an industry standard device driver
solution.
"Project UDI is an innovative, cooperative solution to an industry-wide
problem," Ray Anderson, SCO's senior vice president Marketing. "As a leader
in the UNIX industry, SCO is in the business of advancing technology while
maintaining proven reliability and stability for our existing customers and
partners. To make sure that the needs of our ISV and IHV partners continue to
be met as we advance our technology, we promote and encourage open standards,
such as UDI."
IHVs Supports Project UDI
"UDI promises an intelligent solution to the driver dilemma, by providing
standards for writing device drivers," said Larry Robinson, Architecture
Manager at Adaptec. "UDI is a free and open forum bringing experts in device
driver architecture from multiple companies together. Adaptec is helping to
lead a number of good standards efforts that address I/O software, protocols,
hardware and systems in order to provide better standards-based products to
our customers."
Kevin Quick, Engineering Software Manager at Interphase said, "By
refocusing our development efforts on feature/functionality enhancements,
rather than porting a basic device driver to numerous operating systems, we
will be able to deliver our customers a more feature-rich and stable product
offering in a shorter period of time than was previous available before UDI."
More information on Project UDI is available at http://www.sco.com/UDI .
About SCO
SCO is the world's number one provider of UNIX server operating systems,
and the leading provider of network computing software that enables clients of
all kinds -- including, PCs, graphical terminals, and NCs -- to have Webtop
access to business-critical applications running on servers of all kinds. SCO
designed Tarantella software, the world's first application broker for network
computing. SCO sells and supports its products through a worldwide network of
distributors, resellers, systems integrators, and OEMs. For more information,
see SCO's WWW home page at: http://www.sco.com/.
SCO, The Santa Cruz Operation, the SCO logo, UnixWare, SCO OpenServer, and
Tarantella are trademarks or registered trademarks of The Santa Cruz
Operation, Inc. in the USA and other countries. UNIX is a registered
trademark of The Open Group in the US and other countries. All other brand or
product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products
or services of, their respective owners.
SOURCE SCO
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Related links:
http://www.sco.com
CONTACT:
Monika Laud, Director, Public Relations of
SCO, 408-427-7421, monikal@sco.com
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