DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 1, 1999--Members of Project UDI today announced the release of the UDI (Uniform Driver Interface) 1.0 Specification. This Specification is the culmination of a multi-company development effort designed to provide device driver portability for existing and future system configurations. The Specification is available in PDF format from http://www.projectudi.org/.
UDI supports today's key I/O technologies and is designed with an extensible architecture that can easily accommodate future I/O technologies and products.
With the publication of version 1.0 the Project UDI group is establishing a solid specification upon which both system and I/O vendors may reliably implement device drivers and device driver support. The specification has further been validated by two separate prototyping stages to help insure applicability and completeness for immediate use.
By developing to a single device driver interface, companies can realize significant savings in device driver development and testing costs. It also helps speed time-to-market of new devices, and allows manufacturers to allocate development resources on improving device performance, features, functionality, and quality.
Open source reference implementations based on these prototypes are expected to be available later this year, for sample device drivers as well as environment implementations for a number of operating systems including IBM's AIX, HP's HP-UX, Linux, Compaq's Tru64 UNIX, and SCO's UnixWare.
Project UDI is a multi-company open development group dedicated to developing standardized device driver interfaces for the computer I/O technologies of today and tomorrow. More information on Project UDI may be found at: http://www.project-udi.org/ or by contacting one of the member companies listed below.
More information: http://www.sco.com/udi/pr/19990224.html http://www.sco.com/udi/pr/19990405.html http://www.project-udi.org/ Press Contacts: Adaptec (Nasdaq:ADPT) - Eric Brown, 408/957-1758 Compaq (NYSE:CPQ) - Dick Calandrella, 508/467-2261 Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP) - Graham Smith, 408/447-2097 IBM (NYSE:IBM) - Jennifer Kinsmann, 914/766-3369 Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) - Otto Pijpker, 503/712-1520 Interphase Corp. (Nasdaq:INPH) - Michael Eckley, 214/654-5325 SBS Technologies, Conn. Prod.(Nasdaq:SBSE) - Leslie Richey, 651/905-4717 SCO (Nasdaq:SCOC) - Brian Ziel, 831/427-7252 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW) - Mike Shuster, 650/786-9037Adaptec's Position on UDI
``Adaptec is pleased to have been part of Project UDI since its early stages. Our involvement in the specification's development and with the prototyping effort through our UDI SCSI driver has proven the quality of this architecture for device drivers.'' said Mark Bradley, Systems Architect at Adaptec Corporation.
Because of our committment to satisfying our customers' needs, to industry standards and to enablement of new technologies, it is gratifying to see broad acceptance of UDI in operating systems.
Adaptec intends to continue our support of Project UDI and to satisfy our customers' needs for industry standard device drivers. UDI enables these standardized device drivers for us.``
Compaq's Position on UDI
``The release of the UDI 1.0 specification represents continued progress toward the important goal of providing a common driver interface standard for the industry, and Compaq is supporting this important effort by planning to offer an advanced developers' kit for Compaq Tru64 UNIX later this year,'' said Tim Yeaton, Vice President and General Manager, UNIX Software Division, Compaq Computer Corporation. ``The combination of UDI and Tru64 UNIX on Alpha hardware provides an excellent development environment for building portable 64-bit compliant UDI drivers,'' Yeaton added.
Hewlett Packard's position on UDI
``This release is an important milestone for Project UDI and a giant step towards our goal for an open standards based driver environment'' said Graham Smith I/O Strategist at Hewlett Packard's System Interconnect Solutions Lab. ``HP has demonstrated the effectiveness and portability of UDI on our Enterprise HP-UX platforms and looks forward to sharing the benefits that UDI delivers within the industry.''
IBM's Position on UDI
``Project UDI is an example of an emerging trend towards the development of open standards among UNIX industry leaders,'' said Tilak Agerwala, vice president UNIX marketing and product management, IBM Corporation. ``IBM reinforces its commitment to furthering industry accepted standards through its active participation and future implementation of UDI, as well as other UNIX-based specifications, such as the UNIX Developer's Guide-Programming Interfaces. IBM's proven expertise in I/O technology from its enterprise server lines has helped UDI deliver portability while retaining the performance of the UNIX operating environment.''
Interphase's Position on UDI
``Interphase is a strong proponent of the UDI specification as evidenced by our active involvement with Project UDI,'' said Roger Woolley, Senior Director of Marketing at Interphase Corporation, a market leader in creating high performance connectivity solutions for SAN, WAN, and embedded system environments. ``We believe the industry's adoption of the UDI architecture will lead to more robust and feature-enhanced communications products for the user community with a faster time to market.''
SBS's Position on UDI
``As a leader in high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity, we are pleased to have supported the UDI development efforts,'' said David Greig, President SBS Technologies, Connectivity Products. ``As a multi-platform developer, we anticipate that products built upon UDI will make systems integration easier.''
SCO's Position on UDI
Doug Michels, president and CEO of SCO, said, ``I'm excited to take part in this announcement, representing the culmination of many years of effort and industry cooperation. SCO is proud to be able to share this technology with the industry to promote interoperability and facilitate innovation by allowing each IHV, OSV and platform vendor to focus on software issues unique to their own products. We see UDI as the 'Internet' of device driver interfaces, providing the standardized 'glue' that lets independent components communicate with each other.
``SCO is committed to UDI as the cornerstone of our device driver strategy going forward. At SCO Forum1999 (http://www.sco.com/forum1999) last month, we presented two full days of courses on UDI driver writing to an audience of hundreds of developers. Also at Forum1999, we made available the second version of our Early-Access UDI Developer's Kit (the first version was released in July), which can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.sco.com/udi/sco/udidk.html.''
Sun Microsystem's Position on UDI
``Since Project UDI's inception, Sun has been a valuable supporter, leveraging its extensive I/O experience and contributing to the interface's specifications. Sun is committed to supporting open standards and protocols, such as UDI, which provide cost effective interoperable solutions to developers, ISVs/IHVs and customers.''
Adaptec Eric Brown, 408/957-1758 or Compaq Dick Calandrella, 508/467-2261 or Hewlett-Packard Graham Smith, 408/447-2097 or IBM Jennifer Kinsmann, 914/766-3369 or Intel Otto Pijpker, 503/712-1520 or Interphase Corp. Michael Eckley, 214/654-5325 or SBS Technologies, Conn. Prod. Leslie Richey, 651/905-4717 or SCO Brian Ziel, 831/427-7252 or Sun Microsystems, Inc. Mike Shuster, 650/786-9037