Career prospects in Fiber Channel & Storage industry...

Hi, the

I am about to sit for an interview for a post in ASIC designer for Fiber
Channel...

I want to know how is the prospects in this line of job? I only know some of
the PCI
fiber channel cards sold for $1700+...Are those specialty products? Does it
mean this
industry will stay hot for some time before it plunges like the SDRAM thing?

Thanks for your suggestion...

Kelvin

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 15:06:07 +0800, "Kelvin"
wrote:

Hi, the

I am about to sit for an interview for a post in ASIC designer for Fiber
Channel...

I want to know how is the prospects in this line of job? I only know some of
the PCI
fiber channel cards sold for $1700+...Are those specialty products? Does it
mean this
industry will stay hot for some time before it plunges like the SDRAM thing?

Thanks for your suggestion...

Kelvin


prospects are pretty much zero for somebody that can't spell fibre
channel correctly

Seriously, the industry is hot and with 4Gbit now out, and 10Gbit
around the corner, lots of opportunity. You can get FC cards now for
around $500 from Apple, to over $2K for high-end multiport cards.

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 08:44:04 -0500, David A.Lethe
davidATsantools.com wrote:

On Mon, 12 Apr 2004 15:06:07 +0800, "Kelvin"
wrote:

Hi, the

I am about to sit for an interview for a post in ASIC designer for Fiber
Channel...

I want to know how is the prospects in this line of job? I only know some of
the PCI
fiber channel cards sold for $1700+...Are those specialty products? Does it
mean this
industry will stay hot for some time before it plunges like the SDRAM thing?

Thanks for your suggestion...

Kelvin


prospects are pretty much zero for somebody that can't spell fibre
channel correctly

Seriously, the industry is hot and with 4Gbit now out, and 10Gbit
around the corner, lots of opportunity. You can get FC cards now for
around $500 from Apple, to over $2K for high-end multiport cards.


Dunno about the fiber/fibre thing but right now the market is pretty
good. The more I read and look at products though the more I think
ethernet is going to win out again.

Fiber channel was designed for high performance, low tolerance access.
Back in the day that was *not* ethernet. Today, though, 10GB ethernet
is blazing and the hardware is pretty rock solid. The issues that
brought FC into existance I don't see as issues anymore.
Maybe you don't want to run production storage access over the public
LAN but a private LAN would be simple and alot less money than a FC
network.

What does this mean for FC? Dunno, just my observations and musings.

~F

"Kelvin" writes:
I am about to sit for an interview for a post in ASIC designer for Fiber
Channel...

I want to know how is the prospects in this line of job? I only know
some of the PCI fiber channel cards sold for $1700+...Are those
specialty products? Does it mean this industry will stay hot for
some time before it plunges like the SDRAM thing?

Er...don't expect to be doing this for very long. You'll be in much
better shape if you consider yourself as just working on high-speed
I/O chips. After all, your skills should translate readily to other
chips which interface to high-speed buses or PHYs, or which include a
lot of internal queueing logic, etc. There's very little which is
unique to FibreChannel.

-- Anton