Mellanox Technologies is rolling out a new networking device designed to meet the growing need for high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches in the data center.
Mellanox May 13 unveiled PhyX, a high-density, multiprotocol device that offers six channels in a single device, giving IT administrators greater flexibility with their 10GbE switches.
The announcement comes a day after Mellanox and Teranetics unveiled the ConnectX ENt, a 10GBASE-T NIC (network interface card) that aims to give IT administrators low-latency, high-availability and energy-efficient connectivity capabilities in their data centers.
Mellanox will show off both the PhyX and ConnectX ENt NIC at the Interop 2009 show in Las Vegas May 17-21.
Mellanox’s PhyX supports all 10GbE physical layer functionality in a single device, Mellanox officials said. It also can be easily upgraded to handle emerging protocols for converged networks, such as FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet).
The growing use of virtualization in the data center, coupled with such trends as multicore processing, higher system density and network-intensive applications such as video streaming and Web 2.0 workloads, is driving the demand for more high-density 10GbE capabilities.
John Monson, vice president of marketing at Mellanox, said the trend in the data center as well as in the HPC (high-performance computing) space is toward a single converged networking fabric that can support not only 10GbE but other technologies, including InfiniBand, which Mellanox has a long history with.
“As the network converges, the ideal situation is one where you can choose the interconnect based on the needs of the application,” Monson said in an interview.
PhyX offers six 10GbE ports that provide high port density for 10GbE switches and pass-through modules and support for 1GbE and 10GbE. In addition it supports all 10GbE protocols in a single device, and offers 1.45 watts per port for greater energy efficiency. There also is SR and LR optical module and Twinax copper support.
PhyX solutions are available immediately.