Intel Corp. Monday announced three single-chip Gigabit Ethernet products for desktop PCs, workstations and servers at the companys semiannual U.S. developers forum in San Francisco.
While sales of many technologies have been hard hit during the ongoing U.S. recession, sales of Gigabit Ethernet remain strong, according to industry analysts, as companies move to speed up their network connections to match improvements in computing performance.
In fact, Gigabit Ethernet sales are expected to double every year through 2004, according to market researcher International Data Corp., at which time they are expected to overtake 100M-bps Fast Ethernet as the dominant switching technology for LANs.
Intel currently is the largest supplier of Gigabit Ethernet silicon, accounting for a 60 percent market share, according to industry analyst DellOro Group.
Intels new controllers include the 82546EB dual-port, single-chip controller for servers; the 82545EM single-port, single-chip controller for workstations; and the 82540EM controller for copper-based networks.
The 82546EB and 82545EM controllers support the new PCI-X bus interface and the Alerting Standard Format 1.0 and SMBus 2.0 specifications for server and workstation manageability. Both controllers come with Intels Advanced Network Services software, which is designed to improve uptime of servers and remove server bottlenecks by providing support for fault tolerance load balancing and link aggregation.
The three controllers, which will be available for embedded solutions or network adapters later this year, will be priced at $89.95 for the 82546EB, $59.95 for the 82545EM, and $34.95 for the 82540EM.
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