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This is a somewhat misleading headline as Microsoft/Google/.. are mostly "pulling", not "pushing". Broadcom is the real pusher of 25 and 50GE; they basically by
by rphlx 11y ago
This is a somewhat misleading headline as Microsoft/Google/.. are mostly "pulling", not "pushing". Broadcom is the real pusher of 25 and 50GE; they basically bypassed the IEEE & developed it in near-secret, to become first-to-market at the expense of their competitors in the NIC and top-of-rack switching markets.
Now that they have working products ready-to-ship (or nearly so), they are trying to make it an industry standard, complete with its own standards body. The standard, of course, is going to be exactly what Broadcom has already implemented.
The technology is a natural and significant improvement over 10GE and 40GE within a datacenter though, and it is clearly going to be be gladly pulled by Microsoft, Google, et al over the next year.
- jlgaddis 11y agoI see history repeating itself... Anyone who buys/implements this gear is effectively locking themselves in and, while it may work just fine within their own datacenters, they're still going to have to use the "normal" (i.e. IEEE) standards to connect to anyone else. Broadcom already has a huge portion of the networking market. It's my guess that they didn't initiate this, but why wouldn't they agree to supply the chips if they were approached and asked to do so? Honestly, this seems in line with Microsoft's "embrace and extend" mantra, although I'm having trouble seeing how it benefits them (financially).
- kjs3 11y agoYeah...anyone remember 100baseVG? The HP backed switched ethernet "alternative"? Neither does anyone else...it was a total lock-in play.