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Accredited Standards Committee * X3, Information Technology NEWS RELEASE Doc. No.: PR/96-099 Reply to: Deborah J. Donovan at ddonovan@itic.nw.dc.us
Washington D.C., December 1996 - Accredited Standards Committee X3, Information Technology is announcing the public comment period for X3.304:199x. Development of this draft standard is being done in technical committee X3T10, Lowel Level Interface
The public review extends from December 20, 1996 to February 18, 1997.
This standard defines the multimedia command set extensions for all classes of SCSI devices. The commands specified within this standard define standard access and control to those features of the device that are used in multimedia applications (audio, video, animation). The entire standard command set available for a subject device shall is fully specified by the clause/clauses of this standard pertaining to that device, the applicable clauses of SCSI-3 Primary Commands, and any additional command set standards pertaining to the subject device as documented in the SCSI-3 family of standard.
The SCSI-3 command set and these extensions are transport independent and may be implemented across a wide variety of environments for which a SCSI-3 command mapping and delivery vehicle has been defined. To date these include Fibre Channel, SCSI Parallel Interface, High Performance Serial Bus, and Serial Storage Architecture .
The objective of this command set is to provide for the following:
1) To provide a definition of the command format and functionality independent of delivery, protocol/signaling or transport mechanism. Architectural constraints regarding command function across the various transports are addressed in the SCSI-3 Architectural Model and the document specific to the physical transport.
2) To provide standardized access to common features of SCSI-3 devices employed in multimedia applications.
3) To provide host computer software/firmware with device independence within a class of devices. Thus, different tape drives, optical media drives, and other devices can be added to host computers without requiring modifications to generic system hardware and software. Provision is made for the addition of special features and functions through the use of vendor-specific options. Reserved opcodes are provided for future standardization.
4) To provide compatibility such that properly conforming SCSI-2 devices may inter-operate with SCSI-3 devices given that the systems engineering is correctly done. SCSI-3 protocol extensions are designed to be permissive of rejections by conforming SCSI-2 devices and thus allow the SCSI-2 device to continue operation without requiring the use of the extension.
Submit all comments to: X3 Secretariat, Attn.: Deborah J. Donovan, 1250 Eye Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005, Email: ddonovan@itic.nw.dc.us. Send a copy to: ANSI, Attn.: BSR Center, 11 West 42nd St., New York, NY 10036.
A call for possible patents and pertinent issues (copyrights, trademarks) is also being issued. Please submit information on these issues to the X3 Secretariat at 1250 Eye Street NW, Suite 200, Washington DC 20005. Email: x3sec@itic.nw.dc.us
Copies of X3.304:199x can be purchased from Global Engineering Documents, 15 Inverness Way East, Englewood, CO 80112-5704. 1-800-854-7179 or 303-792-2181.
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