[Beowulf] Intel’s 800Gbps cables headed to cloud data centers and supercomputers

[Prentice Bisbal]

"Intel and several of its partners said they will make 800Gbps cables 
available in the second half of this year, bringing big speed increases 
to supercomputers and data centers."

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/intels-800gbps-cables-headed-to-cloud-data-centers-and-supercomputers/

This could be interesting. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say 
anything about latency.

It does say

"US Conec established an MXC certification program to help other 
companies sell the cables. Tyco Electronics and Molex are the first 
besides Corning to announce that they will build and sell MXC cable 
assemblies."

So it sounds like there will be competition for the cables, but what 
about the NICs and switches? Will Intel have a monopoly on that, or will 
this be a standardized technology that will allow other manufacturers to 
make their own silicon/complete products?

Years ago (the late 90s?) I read an interesting magazine article about 
Intel and why they started making their own NICs, graphics processors, 
etc. According to the article, Intel was content to let 3Com and others 
make networking gear, but when network speeds weren't increasing fast 
enough, Intel got into the game because without increasing network 
speeds, there wasn't much of a need for faster processors. We all know 
that Intel has bought QLogic and is spending a lot money on high-speed 
interconnects. Following the logic of that article, I guess Intel 
realized you can't sell truckloads of processors if your don't have an 
interconnect that makes it worthwhile.

-- 
Prentice