QLogic To Provide CNAs For IBM Servers

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October 22, 2009 (FinancialWire) -- In its second collaboration with IBM this year to bring converged networking solutions to mainstream data centers, QLogic Corp. (NASDAQ: QLGC) announced IBM (NYSE: IBM) has integrated QLogic's award-winning single chip 8100 Series converged network adapters for native Fibre Channel over Ethernet connectivity into IBM's Power Systems portfolio of tower, rack-mount and blade servers.

Based on IBM's industry-leading POWER6 processors, the IBM Power Systems line is a single, energy-efficient and easy-to-deploy platform for UNIX(R), Linux(R) and IBM i applications.

Leveraging its mainframe heritage, IBM Power Systems feature Dynamic Logical Partitions (DLPARs) that enable fine-grained resource allocation to occur not only when activating a logical partition, but also while the partitions are running. Individual processors, memory regions, and I/O adapter slots can be released into a "free pool," acquired from that free pool, or moved directly from one partition to another again, in almost any quantity or combination.

With native FCoE connectivity on IBM Power Systems, IBM is providing the latest in enterprise data center connectivity options to UNIX and Linux customers while significantly lowering power consumption and heat dissipation across the enterprise. The QLogic 8100 series ASIC, based on the Network Plus Architecture, handles storage and data networking traffic at 10GbE line speeds, consumes only one third the power of existing CNA chip sets and is the only CNA on the market to completely eliminate the need for a heat sink.

Leveraging the established architecture of the market-leading QLogic 2500 Series Fibre Channel adapters, the 8100 Series is also the first single chip CNA with an integrated, full FCoE offload engine, enabling faster application performance while saving precious CPU resources, which translates to higher degrees of server virtualization in the data center. By integrating converged networking technology into its Power Systems servers, IBM is enabling customers to preserve the investments and strengths of Fibre Channel while leveraging the ubiquity and economics of Ethernet.

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