Cisco says it will demonstrate 8 Gbps blades for its Fibre Channel directors, which are expected to ship in the fourth quarter, TechTarget reports. The demo will take place next week at at EMC World in Las Vegas. The timing is interesting. Brocade this week introduced its 5300, 5100 and 300 8G Fibre Channel switches and host bus adapters expected to ship by the end of the year. Both of these vendors are chasing Emulex and QLogic, who are shipping 8G entries.

Cisco's 8G blades will support its MDS 9513, 9509 and 9506 chassis, with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) blades to follow. The MDS directors have stayed with the same architecture since they were launched in 2002, so customers won't have to upgrade the entire box, only the line cards, Cisco execs point out. The 8G cards will have the same density as the current 4G cards, supporting up to 48 ports per card and 528 ports for the MDS 9513, 336 ports for the MDS 9509 and 192 ports for the MDS 9506.

Cisco plans to have the FCoE cards for its directors next year. Cisco also plans 8G for its MDS 9100 fabric switch platform next year.

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