The new price is a further step towards the adoption of 10Gbps-Ethernet in HPC environments. Attractive pricing together with the ubiquitous nature of Ethernet will catalyse the adoption of this standard in server clusters and storage servers.

Up to now, the high cost Gbps Ethernet (IEEE 802.3ae 2002) systems restricted their early use to a number of small niche applications such as switch to switch communication over fibre in campus and metropolitan LANs. The introduction of 10GBASE-CX4, ratified by the IEEE in February 2005, enables 10Gbps Ethernet to run over low cost copper cables making it applicable to server clusters and storage servers for the first time. The new price announced by Quadrics for its QsTenG switches will fuel the uptake of 10Gbps-Ethernet in this area.

QsTenG is layer 2 switch that leverages on the standard nature of Ethernet and Quadrics' extensive expertise in the higher end of HPC interconnects to deliver a robust value to the HPC arena. The highly integrated Quadrics 10 Gbps switch is ideal for bandwidth intensive applications such as high performance compute clusters, Grid-based computing systems and storage networks. Quadrics' HPC driven latency focus led naturally to the development of a high port count layer 2 switch. Fast cut-through routing provides QsTenG with port-to-port latencies of 0.5 to 1.5 microseconds.

Cristoforo Romanelli, Quadrics' CEO, stated: "Quadrics' mission is to maintain its leadership as the supplier of the highest performance interconnect to the supercomputing community, while at the same time exploiting its expertise in high performance networking in the wider field of standards based solutions. By having two families of products, Quadrics is meeting the requirements of the most demanding customers in both supercomputing and in the commercial data centre. QsNet's new generations for the high-end requirements and QsTenG based on 10Gbs Ethernet, Quadrics is defining the future of High Performance computing.”