ALISO VIEJO, Calif., May 26, 2009--Continuing to execute along a fast-paced trajectory to expand its industry lead in intelligent converged networking technologies, QLogic Corp., a leading supplier of high performance network infrastructure solutions, today announced IBM is the first tier-one system vendor to integrate QLogic's new single chip 8100 Series converged network adapters (CNAs) for native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity in IBM's mainstream server portfolio.
Specifically, IBM will offer native FCoE connectivity on all IBM rack and tower series servers, including the new Intel Xeon 5500 "Nehalem"-powered BladeCenter and System x offerings, providing the latest in enterprise data center connectivity options to its customers while significantly lowering power consumption and heat dissipation across the enterprise. Optimized for blade servers and high-density storage systems, the QLogic 8100 Series CNAs support simultaneous storage and data networking traffic at full 10GbE line speeds, consume only one third the power of existing CNA chip sets and are the only CNAs on the market to completely eliminate the need for a heat sink. With today's announcement, IBM is enabling customers to leverage the ubiquity and economics of Ethernet while preserving the investment and strengths of Fibre Channel.
"In a period of less than 60 days, QLogic announced the availability of a next generation, single chip CNA and announced a tier one server design win, further capitalizing on its first mover advantage in delivering production-ready FCoE technology," said Bob Laliberte, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "As the FCoE market develops, securing key vendor design wins and go-to-market channels will be critical to establishing market leadership and accelerating adoption of FCoE technology. As evidenced by this announcement, QLogic is setting the pace."
According to Dell'Oro Group, FCoE adapter revenue is expected to increase, on average, by over 200 percent annually from 2008 to 2013 reaching nearly $400M. "FCoE port shipments are expected to increase by an average of 300 percent annually, reaching nearly 2 million ports shipped during the same timeframe," said Seamus Crehan, vice president, Dell'Oro Group.
"The new IBM BladeCenter HS22 servers represent the confluence of multiple emerging technologies driving advances in the data center," said Alex Yost, vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "The QLogic 8100 Series CNAs complement the new generation technology by offloading all FCoE protocol processing to the adapter, freeing up CPU cycles for even faster application performance and increased server Virtual Machine (VM) support. With this generation of no compromise IBM BladeCenter servers, customers can benefit from highly virtualized systems with record levels of performance and scalability and more flexible provisioning of enterprise resources through a single 10GbE network."
As part of today's news, QLogic also announced the new QLogic 10Gb Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) high-speed Pass-thru Module, which provides 14 non-blocking connections between CNAs installed on IBM BladeCenter servers and external 10GbE or 10G CEE switches and devices. The QLogic 8100 Series CNAs provide the foundation for network convergence and work in concert with the new QLogic 10Gb CEE Pass-thru Module to provide a complete, integrated connectivity solution for IBM BladeCenter systems.
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