Bidding for early status in the nascent market for 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel optics, Infineon Technologies AG (NYSE/Frankfurt: IFX) announced today that it's sampling transceivers based on 850nm lasers and demonstrating a 1310nm product at ECOC (see Infineon Intros 4-Gig FC Transceiver).
The latter appears to be the first showing of a 1310nm, 4-Gbit/s product, says Rami Kanama, Infineon's manager of fiber optics marketing.
Component vendors are only beginning to roll out products specifically targeted at 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel, one example being PMC-Sierra Inc.'s (Nasdaq: PMCS) announcement early this month. Part of the hesitation comes from the heavy attention devoted to the 10-Gbit/s speed grade, where Sonet, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel were expected to harmonically converge. But in a surprise vote, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) approved 4-Gig FC for storage area networks, potentially expanding the 4-Gbit/s market. (See FC Fires Up 4-Gig Fiesta and PMC Dips 4-Gig FC Chips.)
That might not stop the supply of 4-Gbit/s parts. Many vendors plan to extend their 3.125-Gbit/s transceivers to do 4-Gbit/s, says Skip Jones, director of planning and technology for QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC). Some examples include Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A), Broadcom Corp. (Nasdaq: BRCM), E2O Communications Inc., Finisar Corp. (Nasdaq: FNSR), and JDS Uniphase Corp. (Nasdaq: JDSU; Toronto: JDU).
Not all of them are shipping yet, but Jones is confident QLogic and its competition will have enough support to deliver products by mid-2004, as planned. "Our supply chain looks pretty good," he says.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
