S2io Introduces Twice as Fast 10 Gigabit Adapter

Updated: The company, which has changed its name to Neterion, expects that its Xframe II product will appeal to the storage, high-performance and enterprise-server markets.

S2io Inc., a startup that makes 10 Gigabit Ethernet hardware and software products, has announced both a name change and a new product that it says will double the data rate of its previous 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company, now known as Neterion Inc., changed its name to reflect the companys broader focus, said CEO Dave Zabrowski.

"S2io was a name created by engineers for engineers," he said. "We wanted a recognizable name associated with networking. The name Neterion is associated more closely with the market we serve and can carry us into perpetuity as we add more products and broaden the company."

Zabrowski also said the new name will better position the company in the eyes of the financial world as it moves toward a potential IPO (initial public offering).

That makes sense, said Anne MacFarland, director of enterprise architectures and infrastructure solutions at The Clipper Group, of Wellesley, Mass.

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"S2io looked very techy and made people think they were dealing with a small company," she said. "This positions them as a broader network element more clearly than the previous name did."

In concert with the name change, Neterion announced the second generation of its Xframe product. While the original Xframe product was based on the PCI-X 1.0 bus architecture, Xframe II is based on the PCI-X 2.0 bus architecture.

"The new technology allows us to plug into a new slot in a server called PCI-X 2.0, which allows the product to run twice as fast," Zabrowski said. "That allows the data to be processed twice as fast."

Three types of users will find Xframe II technology most compelling. In the storage arena, areas such as iSCSI and backup can benefit, with backup being achieved using 10 Gig Ethernet through an NAS (network-attached storage) head, potentially into a SAN (storage area network) back end.

In the high-performance world, which has high bandwidth needs, the technology could be used for processes such as digital rendering, DNA mapping and oil exploration.

And in the enterprise server market, the technology could be used to help server consolidation projects by putting increased workload through the IO more cost-effectively.

"Right now, customers are using 10G for clustering servers. The higher bandwidth allows customers to build high-performance but low-cost server clusters, replacing more expensive Unix systems," said Tony Asaro, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group of Milford, Mass.

Although the original Xframe product is incorporated into products from Neterions OEM partners Hewlett-Packard Co., Cray Inc. and Silicon Graphics Inc., company executives have not yet announced OEMs for Xframe II.

The company plans to announce OEMs for Xframe II by June of this year, Zabrowski said. Those yet-to-be-announced OEMs are developing products based on Xframe II, he added.

Read more here about the Xframe product.

While Xframe 2.0 is not yet compatible with the impending RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) standard, which sends data over a network into a computer quickly and efficiently, future iterations of the product will do so, Zabrowski said.

Neterions roadmap calls for a progression of technology advancement that started with Xframe and Xframe II and will continue with products that comply with both RDMA and iWARP (Internet Wide Area RDMA Protocol), a set of protocols that promises to speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

Editors Note: This story was updated to correct information about OEMs for Xframe and Xframe II.

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