| "It was the best of times, it was the worst of | | | | multicore activity is clearly a boon to the networking |
| times..." | | | | side of the house, particularly wide-band solutions like |
| Dickens was describing London and Paris during the | | | | 10 GbE. Dell'Oro Group reports that the 10 GbE |
| French Revolution. But in today's world, it is an apt | | | | market rebounded in the first quarter, following a |
| description of the IT industry during the virtual | | | | decline in the fourth quarter of 2008. The company |
| revolution. | | | | did not release any numbers from its Network |
| For the worst of times, we need look no further | | | | Adapters Quarterly Report, although it did say that |
| than the server industry, which reported another | | | | Intel is once again the new leader in adapter card |
| disastrous quarter earlier this week. According to IDC, | | | | revenue and port shipments, while Broadcom retained |
| worldwide shipments dropped some 26.5 percent | | | | the spot as leader in silicon controllers. |
| year-over-year in the first quarter of 2009, with all of | | | | This all makes perfect sense, of course, because as |
| the major vendors showing double-digit revenue | | | | more and more data starts to run through fewer and |
| drops. Overall, the industry shipped only 1.49 million | | | | fewer hardware devices, the focus of data center |
| units, the largest decline in five years, with revenues | | | | performance shifts from raw processing power to |
| down nearly a quarter to $9.9 billion. | | | | network agility and speed. Going forward, as cloud |
| The source of all this woe is the one-two punch of | | | | technologies allow enterprises to shift resources on a |
| the recession and virtualization, which dampens the | | | | global scale, the question will no longer be "Do I have |
| demand for new hardware through higher utilization | | | | enough power to handle all this data?", but rather |
| of existing machines. While this may be good for | | | | "How can I get this data quickly to my various |
| capital budgets, as well as the environment, it's | | | | end-points?" |
| proving to be a real burden for the server industry, | | | | And in this vein, there doesn't seem to be anyone |
| which had long counted on a steady refresh rate to | | | | interested in slowing things down. Mellanox, for |
| keep its coffers full. The decline was most keenly | | | | example, just unveiled a 6-port, multiple-protocol 10 |
| felt in x86 devices. | | | | GbE physical layer that lays the groundwork for a |
| IDC is also reporting that the picture seems to be | | | | new generation of high-density, low-power switches |
| the same for the second quarter so far, although | | | | and pass-through devices. The PhyX supports all 10 |
| they are predicting a tepid rebound by the fourth. | | | | Gigabit Ethernet physical layer functions and can be |
| To their credit, many of the top server vendors are | | | | field-upgraded to FCoE with 2, 4, and 8 Gbps Fibre |
| not trying to push back the tide but are actively | | | | Channel gateway service without hardware |
| embracing virtualization and other advanced | | | | modifications. |
| technologies designed to produce more efficient | | | | With such precipitous changes in data center |
| hardware platforms. IBM, for instance, is gearing up | | | | hardware buying patterns, many wonder if things will |
| for a new server line that takes advantage of Intel's | | | | ever get back to normal. While sales and revenue |
| forthcoming Nehalem-EX architecture that features | | | | figures have fluctuated over the years, the hard |
| up to 64 cores across eight processors. Although the | | | | news this time is that these changes look permanent. |
| system is likely to be expensive, it could do the job | | | | Once the recession is over, server sales should pick |
| of multiple blade servers through its ability to handle | | | | up, but they will be nowhere near previous numbers |
| up to 128 individual threads. The chip itself also | | | | because those low utilization rates are gone forever. |
| provides 16 memory slots per socket and four | | | | The new normal will be relatively low server activity |
| QuickPath interconnect links for processing large | | | | and increasingly fast networks as enterprises position |
| amounts of data in tandem. | | | | themselves for the cloudy/virtual decade to come. |
| Now for the best of times. All of this virtual and | | | | |