Force10 touts 10G Internet switch

Force10's new 10G switch pushes Ethernet close to InfiniBand.

Force10 this week is expected to announce an all-10G Ethernet stackable switch targeting super high-end computer clusters and corporate data centers deploying 10G connections to servers and storage boxes.

The S2410 has 24 10G Ethernet ports that can be fiber-based or copper using the CX4 standard for short-run 10G Ethernet links. Force10 says the device provides extremely low traffic latency that rivals the performance of proprietary high-speed interconnect technologies or InfiniBand, but with lower-priced and less-complex Ethernet technology.

The S2410 can sit between a bank of servers with 10G Ethernet network interface cards and a data center backbone switch. The device also can be deployed as a 10G aggregation switch, linking clusters of Gigabit Ethernet-connected servers to a chassis-based 10G Ethernet core switch.

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Force10 this week is expected to announce an all-10G Ethernet stackable switch targeting super high-end computer clusters and corporate data centers deploying 10G connections to servers and storage boxes.

The S2410 has 24 10G Ethernet ports that can be fiber-based or copper using the CX4 standard for short-run 10G Ethernet links. Force10 says the device provides extremely low traffic latency that rivals the performance of proprietary high-speed interconnect technologies or InfiniBand, but with lower-priced and less-complex Ethernet technology.

The S2410 can sit between a bank of servers with 10G Ethernet network interface cards and a data center backbone switch. The device also can be deployed as a 10G aggregation switch, linking clusters of Gigabit Ethernet-connected servers to a chassis-based 10G Ethernet core switch.

The S2410 provides Layer 2 switching at full speed on all ports simultaneously, for a total switching capacity of about 2.4Tbps in a single-rack-unit device. Besides its high density, Force10 says the box's top feature is its fraction-of-a-second delay to move Ethernet frames through the device.

S2410 design engineers say the switch can move traffic with as little as 300 nanosec of latency, while most Ethernet switches measure traffic latency in milliseconds. (By comparison, latency in InfiniBand gear such as Voltaire's Grid Switch ISR and Cisco's SFS 7000 InfiniBand Server Switch ranges from 140 to 200 nanosec.)

Nanosecond latency - the measurement used in server and PC memory and processor latency factors - is required for distributed network gear connecting clustered computer systems sharing memory processes across physical-hardware RAM over a network. Traffic running between such nodes will produce errors unless the information delay between computers is as low as it would be inside a single computer, experts say. InfiniBand or proprietary interconnect products from such vendors as Myrinet or Dolphin are usually used for such deployments.

The S2410's lean design, with a single ASIC and one-switch fabric, allows for this low latency when moving Ethernet frames.

"There's no routing table lookups [because the switch is Layer 2 only] and less components for traffic to flow through," which can introduce latency inside a switch, says Steve Garrison, Force10's marketing director. Other single-rack-unit 10G switches that compete with the S2410 include Foundry's eight-port EdgeIron 8X10G switch and HP's ProCurve 6400cl switch.

The S2410 costs $20,000 for the CX4 copper version, or about $830 per port. The fiber version, at a base price of $30,000, does not include XFP optical transceivers, which could double the base price. The switch is expected to be available next month.

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