10 Gigabit Ethernet

Holy crap. They have 10 gigabit ethernet cards now.

http://www.smc.com/files/AY/DS_SMC10GPCIe-10BT.pdf

Not only are they 10 gigabit, but they use regular copper twisted pair wiring. You can run 10 gigabit ethernet up to 45 meters on plain ordinary CAT5e cabling, and up to 100m on CAT6.

The cards are about a grand a pop, but it'll surely go down. And this is the first time I see a network card with a *fan* on it! I'm not too surprised; the DSP trickery that must be needed to put 10 Gb ethernet on regular UTP must be mind-blowing.

I'm wondering how long we start needing these, though. Only trunks between switches have saturated gigabit ethernet links, in my experience. It'll probably be a few years before servers can make the most of having 10 gigabit links.