Smart Data Centers Feature Editorial

Significant proof points of its momentum and leadership have been announced by Solarflare (News - Alert) Communications. Multiple Fortune 100 customers will be shipped the SFN5121T dual-port 10GBASE-T server adapter by Solarflare. These are based on Solarflare’s 65 nm SFT9001 transceiver. Based on Solarflare's 40 nm SFT9104 transceiver, products are being designed by multiple OEM customers. Solarflare Communications is a top company in 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 10GbE data center solutions. The industry transition to the next silicon process node is being led by Solarflare.

A wide choice of high-density 24- to 48-port 10GBASE-T data center switches is available to IT and data center managers from several switch vendors. Choice in low-power, low-profile 10GBASE-T adapters is however not available. Several Fortune 100 companies are evaluating Solarflare's SFN5121T 10GBASE-T dual-port server adapter. IT and data center managers now have the products to build cost-effective 10GbE networks as they can combine this with the availability of multi-core servers that can take advantage of 10 Gbps.

Based on Solarflare's SFT9001 65 nm transceiver, the SFN5121T dual-port 10GBASE-T server adapter is the lowest-power 10GBASE-T server adapter on the market. Triple speed Ethernet is only supported by this adapter. The adapter has been designed from the ground up to support hardware assisted virtualization. The SFN5121T supports the emerging PCI SIG SR-IOV or single-root IO virtualization standard. Guest applications in VMware, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft (News - Alert) Hyper V environments are accelerated by this adapter.

Multiple products based on Solarflare 40 nm SFT9104 transceiver are implemented by OEM systems companies. Higher density switches from 48 to 96 ports in one rack unit and quad-port adapters are enabled with the SFT9104 transceiver.

In a release, Russell Stern, CEO, Solarflare said, "Our OEM customers have very high standards and rigorous test procedures for qualifying chips. My customers tell me that in contrast to competitive solutions, they continue to be impressed by our transceiver's ability to consistently consume low power, while at the same time dynamically adapting to changing EMI environments or physical perturbations of the cables.”

Stern added the company has achieved the power, density, performance and cost required to accelerate the mass adoption of 10GbE. Customers can integrate SFT9104, lowest-power and easiest to use 10GBASE-T part into their designs.