14 DAY TRIAL // Following the Supercomputing 2007 craze, the Pentrum Group has unveiled their new single stream wide area network interface card. What makes their card really special is the dazzling 40 gigabits streaming speed that practically allows the user to download a HD-DVD or a Blu-ray one in less than 10 seconds across a wide area network. The interface supports high-bandwidth data preprocessing that works tightly related with enterprise-level networking equipments such as the SGI Altrix servers.
The device has been born in a joint effort of PGI, Intel Corporation, SGI and the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and is able to deliver speeds up to four times higher than the fastest WAN networks, and which works with OC-768c IP Packet over SONET. Additionally, the Swift40e can be configured with two PCIe x16 cards for a full-featured duplex optical streaming transmission with up to 16 GB of onboard memory. As data volumes are increasingly growing due to the high level of detail (such as scientific and engineering applications or the advent of the high-definition television), the main bottleneck in the digital world is the network itself.
Apart form the supercomputing communities, both the United States Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense showed their interest in the new product. "One of our missions is to develop technologies that will enable the next generation of net-centricity for the warfighter", said Dr. Henry Dardy, chief scientist for advanced computing at NRL's Center for Computational Science. "Our global net-centric information infrastructure is undergoing significant change as data increases faster than Moore's Law. IP convergence has allowed the warfighter and the analyst to build a virtual enterprise. Swift40e technology ensures that the enterprise communicates and shares data effectively in near realtime."
The Swift40e interface card has already been displayed at the Supercomputing 2007 fare, but there is a long way ahead until the product hits the retailers' shelves. The first institutions to make use of it are the Government and the Department of Defense.