November 28, 2007 -- SMC Networks has launched its line of 10G network adapters, including fiber and copper versions designed to provide 10G connections to servers.
The company's standard-compliant 10GBASE-T server adapter, the SMC10GPCIe-10BT, is available at an MSRP of $1299. Also available is a 10-Gigabit optical server adapter, the SMC10GPCIe-XFP, at an MSRP of $799. The company says the adapters provide superior performance and thermal management.
According to the company, the adapters' key features include: a "cut-through architecture" for low latency Ethernet performance; virtualization of the host interface; and VNIC capability, for clean, efficient acceleration of I/O in virtualized operating system deployments.
Both adapters run on a high speed PCI-Express x8 host bus and are half-height, with brackets for half- or full-height installation.
"Price has been a barrier to widespread 10-Gigabit Ethernet adoption," comments Iain Kenney, SMC's director of product marketing. "SMC's new 10G network adapters are designed around the concept of stateless offload, or leveraging the host CPU more efficiently to get the job done, which allows for a more attractive price/performance ratio."
The 10G Ethernet adapters are suitable for high-bandwidth applications including NAS servers, SAN arrays, HPC computers, blade servers, video servers, application servers and Web accelerators.