[Beowulf] SC|05: will 10Ge beat IB?

[Greg Lindahl]

> further, there was also LOTS of 10G ethernet this year, and I have 
> to wonder: will 10G squeeze IB out of the market?  

Which market?

There's no question that outside the high-end of HPC, 10G ethernet
will eventually win. Like the past couple of ethernet transitions
we've all witnessed, Ethernet will be late and more expensive than
predicted, and by the time it's really cheap, the high end will be at
a higher bandwidth. And non-Ethernet will always win on latency.

Then it comes down to: what fraction of the market will find 10G
ethernet to be good enough? My bet (look at my employer) is that it
will be about the same fraction that was happy with gigabit ethernet a
couple of years ago. These things go in cycles, they don't really
change.

-- greg
(employed by, not speaking for, PathScale.)