January 29, 2007 -- Chelsio Communications, Inc. (www.chelsio.com) has introduced what it calls the industry's first 10-Gbit Ethernet adapter cards based on the 10GBASE-T (IEEE 802.3an) standard interface for 10-Gbit/sec transmission over Category 6 or Category 7 copper cabling.
According to the company, the products expand the concept of the "unified wire," enabling "the convergence of server networking, storage networking and cluster computing interconnects onto a single platform and a single fabric."
Chelsio has released two 10-Gbit Ethernet cards: the S310e-BT storage adapter and the N310e-BT server adapter. Both cards offer a single dual-speed auto-negotiating 1-GbE/10-GbE port, and support the PCI-Express host bus interface.
According to the company, the dual speed feature allows an immediate upgrade of server interconnects to 10G, while preserving the interoperability with existing 1G switches, thereby decoupling the upgrade cycles of servers and switches. The products are designed to operate within the allowed power envelope for a PCI-Express slot, without any additional power connector requirement.
The S310e-BT is powered by Chelsio's Terminator 3 (T3) ASIC and Teranetics' (www.teranetics.com) TeraPHY TN1010 transceiver. The T3 fully offloads TCP/IP, iSCSI and iWARP RDMA processing from the host system. According to the companies, the protocol offload feature reduces CPU utilization by up to 90% and decreases system power consumption, while increasing network bandwidth and lowering communication latency. With these benefits, it becomes possible to converge applications that traditionally used niche technologies onto 10-Gbit Ethernet, say the companies.
The N310e-BT is a stateless offload server adapter, delivering high throughput for 10-Gbit Ethernet server applications. With the N310 series, enterprises can connect servers and storage systems directly to a 10-GbE backbone switching infrastructure using RJ-45 connectors, in addition to previously available fiber and CX-4 copper.
"As the first to support 10GBASE-T, Chelsio is continuing on its tradition of performance, innovation and technological leadership. We can now deliver to our customers the highest performance 10-Gbit Ethernet in the industry, with their choice of any physical layer technology, any host bus technology, any type of offload technology, and their choice of single or dual port," comments Kianoosh Naghshineh, president and CEO of Chelsio.
"Teranetics is pleased to work closely with Chelsio to bring industry's first 10GBASE-T compliant adapters to the market," adds Matt Rhodes, CEO of Teranetics. "Using the Teranetics single-chip transceiver complements the features of Chelsio's controller to provide a new benchmark in performance and ease-of-installation."
The S310e with 10BASE-T connectivity is priced at $1,995. The N310e-BT is priced at $1,295. Both adapters are sampling now and will begin shipping in March.