November 1, 2007 -- Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Supermicro) has introduced its first 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) platforms, comprised of the Supermicro AOC-UTG-i2 Universal I/O (UIO) and AOC-STG-i2 standard PCI-Express network adapters. Based on the Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller, the company says the adapters enable the mainstream server market with dual-port PCI-Express-based 10GbE connectivity for optimal I/O performance.
"The Supermicro 10GbE adapters empower our existing customers to upgrade right away to dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet," comments Charles Liang, CEO and president of Supermicro. "The flexibility of our UIO architecture enables the AOC-UTG-i2 card for installation in 1U, 2U, 3U and 4U systems equipped with UIO motherboards, while the low-profile AOC-STG-i2 can be installed in any standard PCI-Express x8 slot. With outstanding performance and power efficiency, these products are ideal for a wide range of enterprise server environments like those running virtualization, demanding storage and high performance computing applications."
According to the company, providing dual-port 10GbE performance at an average of 6.5 watts, the network adapters address the need created by the extensive growth in dense computing environments for efficient, high-bandwidth designs. The company contends that both the AOC-UTG-i2 and AOC-STG-i2 feature the reliability necessary for storage applications such as iSCSI, the dual-port redundancy needed for networking applications, as well as the throughput and low memory latency required for high-performance computing applications.
For greater flexibility, Supermicro offers a CX4-to-Optical cable option, which increases the viable cable length from 15 meters over CX4 copper cable to up to 100 meters over optical cable. These controller cards also support Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity including Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) and Intel I/O Acceleration Technology (I/OAT). The technologies are designed to improve overall system performance, lower CPU utilization, reduce system latency, and improve networking and I/O throughput in a virtualized environment.