SGI earlier this week selected Neterion's new low-profile 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter for its high-performance server, cluster and storage platforms.

The 10 Gigabit adapter is compatible with both PCI-X 1.0 and 2.0 DDR bus interfaces, says Neterion (formerly S2io). It includes full native support in drivers already shipping in several major Linux distributions.

The adapter will be available for all of SGI's Altix and Altix XE server, cluster and storage platforms. SGI users often have demanding requirements for I/O-intensive applications, and the company says the small form factor will help as SGI packs more server blades into a small space.

“A smaller, more energy efficient, scalable architecture that offers greatly improved performance is a winning combination for our customers,” said Dave Parry, senior vice president and product general manager for SGI, in a statement.

The Altix series ranges from a dense blade server, to a supercomputing platform for high-performance computing (HPC), to a midrange blade server with dual-core processors, to an entry-level server that can scale to support HPC applications. SGI's InfiniteStorage NAS and SAN systems are based on Altix.

The Altix XE servers and clusters are SGI's newest product line, based on Intel's Xeon dual-core 5100 processor architecture.

Neterion is a big proponent of 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and last year the company started a special adapter evaluation program to drum up interest in the technology.

In related news, 10 Gigabit Ethernet chip maker Solarflare Communications says that in September it will formally demonstrate its 10GBase-T physical-layer interface reaching 100 meters on standards-compliant Category-6a wiring.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.