With the rise of virtualization, network convergence, iSCSI, and cloud computing, I/O is rapidly becoming a serious bottleneck for many datacenters. Datacenter managers are desperate for higher bandwidth, but solutions that would relieve the bottlenecks remain cost-prohibitive. Today, most datacenter networking infrastructure remains at Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) bandwidth speeds. Server vendors offer 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) mezzanine and network interface cards (NICs) for their blades and servers. However, these cards are expensive, and they do little good for servers connected to a slow network. 10GbE is making limited inroads into the datacenter, but it is mostly used as a trunk between switches, where bandwidth is absolutely critical and cost is not an issue. In January, Mellanox Technologies decided to change this situation by slashing the prices of its 10GbE and 40GbE switches and NICs to get the new technology moving rapidly and gain market share at the same time.
According to Mellanox, its 10GbE NICs have about a 15% market share, with the remainder of the market divided among a large number of vendors. Mellanox offers a complete line of 10GbE products through its SwitchX line of switches and ConnectX-3 line of converged network adapters. The SX1016, with 64 10GbE ports, was launched in late August 2011. Mellanox claims that the SX1016 delivers very high density and performance compared to switches from competitors. With its January price cut, Mellanox can also claim that the SX1016 has the lowest cost per port of any 10GbE switch on the market. Similarly, the ConnectX-3 10GbE adapters feature low latency, high bandwidth, and the lowest adapter card power per port of any adapter on the market.
Even more impressive is the SX1036 40GbE switch that Mellanox launched in mid-2011. This switch allows customers to bypass the 10GbE generation and go right to 40GbE. The only issue today is that achieving full 40GbE bandwidth requires PCI Express 3.0 I/O, slated to be available from Tier-1 server OEMs in the coming months. According to Mellanox, the SX1036 is just slightly more expensive per 10GbE port than the SX1016, meaning that many IT departments will choose to deploy 40GbE switches and wait for the corresponding 40GbE NICs to catch up. Mellanox reports that a number of its customers are choosing this path and skipping 10GbE altogether.
These recent moves by Mellanox will certainly be welcomed by data center managers around the world. The end of the usefulness of GigE is near, and the next two generations of networking products are available today, and at a reasonable price, thanks to Mellanox. Pricing is one of the last hurdles to be overcome in the adoption of 10GbE and 40GbE. After all, these new switches and NICs are backward-compatible with GigE, allowing network managers to upgrade incrementally, where it makes the most sense. As a result, now is the time to plan the switchover and make the investment in either 10GbE or 40GbE. Not only will users appreciate the added bandwidth, but network administrations will be able to take some of the complexity out of their network by consolidating multiple GigE ports. It also makes sense to deploy 40GbE switches instead of 10GbE switches. With PCI Express 3.0 on the industry’s doorstep, it just does not make sense to upgrade switches twice in such a short time.
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