Solarflare Unveils Solarstorm Dual-Port, Triple-Speed 10GBASE-T Server Adapter

 Offering the industry's lowest-power 10GBASE-T network interface card (NIC (News - Alert)), Solarflare Communications, a provider of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), has introduced the Solarflare Solarstorm SFN5121T dual-port 10GBASE-T server adapter.

 

The new features provided with SFN5121T include Dynamic Power Scaling, which enables shorter links to consume less power, as well as sleep and data center modes.

 

Various switch vendors, such as Arista Networks, Cisco, Dell (News - Alert) and Extreme now offer multiple high-density 24- to 48-port 10GBASE-T data center switches. The broad availability of these line-rate, non-blocking 10GBASE-T switches drives the need for high-performance, dual-port 10GBASE-T server adapters. Managers now have the products to build cost-effective 10GbE networks, which is combined with the availability of multi-core servers that can take advantage of 10Gbps.

 

"We are excited to broaden our portfolio of Solarflare (News - Alert) products with our latest dual-port 10GBASE-T NIC,' said Mike Smith, general manager of host solutions. 'Our newest product addresses the needs of the evolving market, delivering the power, application performance and virtualization capabilities for today's data centers. Over 90 percent of cabling in data centers and enterprises is twisted pair copper. Now, data center and IT managers can avoid forklift upgrades."

 

Offering IT and data center managers the flexibility to manage their server upgrades asynchronously from their switch upgrades, 10GBASE-T supports auto negotiation with installed 1000BASE-T equipment. Both ends of the wire will not have to be upgraded to 10GbE at the same time. Allowing network managers to preserve their costly investments in cabling and patch panels, the Solarflare SFN5121T also runs on installed Category 5E and 6 cabling.

 

Recently, the company announced it has begun sampling the industry's first 40nm quad-port 10GBASE-T PHY chip. The SFT9104, Solarflare's fourth-generation PHY chip, was developed at its labs in Orange County, Calif. It has passed testing on links up to 100 meters, meeting a critical requirement in the 10GBASE-T standard for broad deployment. Solarflare's robust and power-efficient solutions are cost effective and easy to deploy.

Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Raju's articles, please visit his columnist page.