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iniewski
As far as I can tell Broadcom, Teranetics/PLX, Solar Flare and Aquantia sells ...
ttt3
Solarflare is still in business as far as I can tell. Teranetics was acquired ...
10GBase-T gets few sockets in 2011 servers
Rick Merritt
1/18/2011 12:34 AM EST
SAN JOSE, Calif. – The chip market for 10 Gbit/second Ethernet over copper cables will only amount to a little more than $350 million in 2014, but will take off rapidly after that, according to a report from a new analysis firm.
That's the projection of the first round of volume chip sales based on 40nm devices for the 10GBase-T standard, said Kim Brown, senior analyst at LightCounting and author of the new report. To date the majority of 10G Ethernet sales have been for optical products, such as SFP+ which hit 2 million units in 2010, Brown said.
Intel is the only company with an integrated 10GBase-T transceiver for copper cables today, a fact that will mute volume server and switch sales in 2011. However, the window for design wins in the coming generation of servers based on Intel's Sandy Bridge processors is about to close, he added.
The next big window will come in two years when Intel rolls out a next-generation server CPU family that requires a new mother board design. By that time 10GBase-T transceivers should be available in 28nm process technology supporting low power consumption and cost, he said.
"You are not going to get LAN on motherboard designs down unless you hit one of these cycles," said Brown.
Even at 40nm the 10GBase-T chips will consumer an order of magnitude less power and have dramatically lower costs and latency than the optical SFP+ links, Brown said.
Intel's controller is said to be using a physical layer block from startup Teranetics acquired by PLX Technologies. Broadcom is also expected to be a strong player in 10GBase-T and Marvell is also expected to enter the market.
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DF
1/18/2011 11:35 AM EST
To be pedantic here, shouldn't 10GBase-CX4 and 10GBase-CR also be included if we're talking about "10 Gbit/second Ethernet over copper"?
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kinnar
1/18/2011 12:21 PM EST
At last the server room patching will be easier due to 10GBase-T it it allows use of CAT6 cables for shorter distance patch cables. This way it be easier to handle different switches interchangeably while debugging the network problems.
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tb1
1/18/2011 12:27 PM EST
You aren't being pedantic. There's a debate over whether it makes more sense to use 10GBase-CR over 10GBase-T. It is cheaper and lower power which is why it is used in places like Google. But it requires new cabling, which might be prohibitive for many places.
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iniewski
1/18/2011 1:31 PM EST
I am having hard time believing that Intel is the only company that has 10GBase-T transceiver technology...there was at least 4 guys a while back developing this, I guess some got swallowed in acquisitions but there must be another source. Anyone? Kris
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ttt3
1/18/2011 11:52 PM EST
I agree... pretty sure Broadcom, Teranetics, and Solarflare all have 10GBASE-T transceivers. Although, the article does mention "integrated", so perhaps they mean a MAC/PHY single chip (which I'm not sure Intel has... I know there's the 82599 but it requires an external XAUI to 10GBASE-T conversion....)
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doug.coleman
1/18/2011 3:00 PM EST
Is this correct? Even at 40nm the 10GBase-T chips will consumer an order of magnitude less power and have dramatically lower costs and latency than the optical SFP+ links, Brown said.
I thought SFP+ would always have lower latency and power compared to 10GBASE-T.
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DF
1/18/2011 4:26 PM EST
Doug,
I thought the same thing too. I thought 10GBase-T had a lot higher latency due to the massive amount of signal processing needed to essentially perform the impossible.
Also, what about the latency of 10GBase-T versus doing 10GB Ethernet over twinax cabling?
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iniewski
1/18/2011 4:23 PM EST
Doug: optical link requires E-O-E conversion so the power includes laser, photodiode etc in addition to the electronic portion...still an order of magnitude power for Base-T solution is hard to believe considering the amount of equalization one has to do at 10 Gb/s...Kris
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Kimball
1/18/2011 4:43 PM EST
10GBASE-T, even at 40nm, is higher in both wattage and in latency. But it is a lot cheaper. 10GBASE-KR is already selling as a LOM in HP Blade servers.
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iniewski
1/19/2011 9:52 AM EST
Does anyone know what happened to Solarflaire and Teranetics? I worked on 10GBASE-T design 7 years ago and at the time they were the only two start-ups in that space....Kris
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ttt3
1/20/2011 5:19 PM EST
Solarflare is still in business as far as I can tell. Teranetics was acquired by PLX ...
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doug.coleman
1/19/2011 9:59 AM EST
SFP+ transceivers are low cost .. .it's just the Network supplier mark up that makes them expensive to the end-user. 20X OEM price.
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iniewski
1/20/2011 5:46 PM EST
As far as I can tell Broadcom, Teranetics/PLX, Solar Flare and Aquantia sells these. Here are the links to ICs:
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Physical-Layer/
http://www.teranetics.com/products/10gbase-t
http://www.webcitation.org/5jc2TUnO0
http://www.aquantia.com/pdf/AquantiaAQ1002_11172008.pdf
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