IEEE Releases 802.3ba Standard 141
An anonymous reader writes "EEE announced the ratification of IEEE 802.3ba, a new standard governing 40Gbps and 100Gbps Ethernet operations. An amendment to the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard, IEEE 802.3ba, the first standard ever to simultaneously specify two new Ethernet speeds, paves the way for the next generation of high-rate server connectivity and core switching. The new standard will act as the catalyst needed for unlocking innovation across the greater Ethernet ecosystem. IEEE 802.3ba is expected to trigger further expansion of the 40 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit Ethernet family of technologies by driving new development efforts, as well as providing new aggregation speeds that will enable 10Gbps Ethernet network deployments."
Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! (Score:1, Insightful)
you really think you're gonna be sending 40Gb over copper?
Re:Disc speeds (Score:3, Insightful)
SSDs are going to hit 6 gbit/sec in the next year or so. Multiply by 17 devices on a SAN and you're done.
Re:Disc speeds (Score:3, Insightful)
Delivering 100 Mbit/s Internet to 1000 people before over-subscription seems like a nice application. Unless you're in the US in which case it probably covers New York.
One cable to rule them all (Score:5, Insightful)
Light Peak (Score:3, Insightful)
USB3, HDMI, DVI, Ethernet, DisplayPort, FireWire, eSATA, proprietary. There should be one kind cable that can be used for all of these purposes. We have the technology. Consumers will thank you.
Are you here from Intel marketing?
<wp:Light_Peak>
Oh, heck, that's still not working. fine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak [wikipedia.org]
Re:Disc speeds (Score:3, Insightful)
True, though many a small business has a SAN built on consumer grade devices. My point was exactly that the low end will be pushing up against this limit all too soon.
Re:RIP OUT THE CAT5e CABLE BOYZ !! (Score:5, Insightful)
There isn't a whole lot of difference between the raw speed of the signal in a copper line and fiber line, the electrical signal already travels at effectively the speed of light (or close enough that it doesn't really matter). It's distance that's a problem for copper. An electrical signal through copper has significantly more attenuation than an optical signal through fiber, which means right from the very start the signal is cleaner and more usable. The cleaner the signal, the easier it is to pick up small variations in the signal accurately, and the more data you can pack into the signal. Copper is also vulnerable to noise, which further reduces the signal quality, which means a less complex signal is possible. This is why copper is useful for ultra-high speed IO inside a computer covering inches or less (the IO in a CPU travels only nanometers and is obscenely fast), but once you start stretching it a few feet its effectiveness drops off dramatically. Fiber is capable of handling much longer distances before the same attenuation loss occurs.
Other than that it's just the equipment on the back end that are different, and the concepts behind both fiber and copper are the same. Only the components are different.
In other words, it's trivial to make copper just as fast or faster than fiber. In fact, the fastest copper connections are already faster than the fastest fiber connections. What isn't trivial is making copper as fast as fiber over the same distances. Fiber wins hands down on a run of any distance. Therefor copper only wins on short runs, due to the huge price difference between the two.
Re:One cable to rule them all (Score:3, Insightful)
HDMI/DVI/DisplayPort are for raw video data. They have NOTHING in common with the USB mouse/keyboard on your desk. It makes no sense to combine them.
There's some good reasons for the differences. For instance, even if I could hook up my internet access to the same port as my hard drives, I never would... One needs low-overhead, realtime and no security, while the other is high overhead, delays are better than realtime constraints, and needs much more security.
While you have a point about the display ports, it's far worse to have only one type available, which always sucks.