What was announced?
Coming off its acquisition of NetXen, QLogic has announced the 3XXX series of so-called Intelligent Ethernet Adapters. These new QLogic adapters are "intelligent" because they include stateless and stateful offload, use the same drivers for the 1-Gb and 10-Gb models, and the same card can support either optical or copper connectors. Stateful offload in the 10-Gb models improves CPU utilization for TCP/IP network traffic.
Why it matters
QLogic bought NetXen to extend its Ethernet expertise and gives QLogic entry into a bigger, albeit more competitive, market. This gives customers the opportunity to reduce the number of suppliers (consolidate the FC and Ethernet suppliers), and can get support for multiple types of products from the same supplier.
These adapters will become increasingly important for the emerging 10GbE infrastructure and will provide host offload, which is especially useful in virtualized server environments. Over the next few years, as 10GbE and PCI-Express 2.0 become increasingly common, users will be able to take advantage of new higher speed servers with these QLogic Ethernet adapters.
How does QLogic stack up?
QLogic already has a strong OEM presence with its Fibre Channel heritage, and it has good silicon expertise and credibility. QLogic added “large receive offload” to its card, and this is one differentiating feature when compared to vendors such as Intel and Broadcom. This series of Ethernet adapters can use either copper or optical connectors, which means that the investment in the adapter is preserved, even if it becomes necessary to use different types of cables. These QLogic Ethernet adapters are feature-rich and competitive right out of the gate. QLogic is a new entry to this space and appears to be serious about going after opportunities, despite other large and small competitors that occupy the market.
This set of adapters from QLogic rounds out the company's strategy to provide Fibre Channel HBAs, Ethernet NICs and Converged Networking Adapters, so that it can participate in storage, networking, and converged networking markets.
Action Item: Data center managers now have more options for Ethernet adapters and should add QLogic to the list of possibilities. QLogic brings expertise of building datacenter class adapters to Ethernet customers. As Ethernet adoption moves to 10GbE, this will become more important.
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