FC Fires Up 4-Gig Fiesta

When QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC) professed its intentions to bet on 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel products a couple months ago, it may have seemed like a long shot. But after a Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) vote approving 4GFC for SANs, the company may be able to cash in on its gamble after all (see QLogic Starts 4-Gig Quest).

In a surprising move, the FCIA (along with its sister organization in Japan) voted late last week in favor of extending 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel from just providing back-end storage system connectivity to also being a switched SAN fabric technology (see FCIA Approves 4-Gbit/s FC for SANs).

"Were ecstatic!" says QLogic VP of marketing Frank Berry. "We’re thrilled that the industry is getting behind this. It will certainly help us maintain our leadership." QLogic expects to start shipping 4-Gbit/s FC products for the SAN fabric by the end of this year.

The vote flies in the face of a long-held industry expectation that 10 Gbit/s would be the next stop on the speed scale after the current generation of 2-Gbit/s FC. Most vendors of SAN fabric products have been busy developing the technology that will make it possible for Fibre Channel performance to keep pace with the ongoing migration to 10 Gbit/s on the Ethernet side of the equation.

But about six months ago, as the economy continued to slip and the sprint towards 10 Gbit/s seemed to slow to a crawl, the FCIA Speed Forum Working Group started discussing whether swooshing by 4 Gbit/s on the way to 10 Gbit/s might make sense.After months of debating the pros and cons of implementing the technology, more than two thirds of the FCIA’s member companies cast their votes last Friday afternoon. Despite vocal opposition and feigned indifference to the move from industry giants like Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), and Emulex Corp. (NYSE: ELX) over recent months, 60 percent of the companies voted for the 4-Gig extension, according to Skip Jones, the FCIA's sitting chairman and Qlogic’s director of planning and technology. Another 30 percent of the members voted against the move, and 10 percent abstained.

"We believe most major system OEM vendors, as well as Brocade and McData, voted against the concept, while component suppliers werelargely in favor," says Wall Street firm RBC Capital Markets in a note today. "Our contacts indicate that those in opposition were concerned about the extra effort required to design and test 4-Gbit/s solutions concurrently with a 10-Gbit/s deployment cycle. Those in favor cite the need for a less expensive upgrade alternative versus forthcoming 10-Gbit/s designs."

Jones says the large turnout lends credibility to the decision. "The vote provides a very clear and concise direction for where the industry as a collective is heading... There’s a very strong consensus."

Up until now, QLogic’s lone attempts to push 4-Gbit/s FC technology as the next natural step had been met by many industry players as ludicrous. Vendors that have already spent a lot of time and money developing 10-Gbit/s FC technology have been especially dismissive (see Fibre Channel SANs: 4G or Not 4G?). Following the FCIA’s announcement today, however, industry players have been tripping over each other to jump on the 4-Gbit/s bandwagon (see JNI Gets Ready for 4/10-Gig FC and QLogic Gets 4-Gig FC Backers).

"Despite the official opposition, our system OEM contacts indicate a strong expectation that external 4-Gbit/s solutions will see meaningful adoption," says RBC in its note, adding that the large price gulf between 4- and 10-Gig will probably drive the adoption of the new technology.Jones says he hopes some of 4GFC’s starkest opponents will follow suit. "I’d like to think that with clear direction, some of these folks will see that the industry wants this."

Neither Brocade, Emulex, nor McData returned calls by press time.

There are many benefits to offering 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel speeds, say the technology's supporters. Most compelling, perhaps, is that while doubling the performance of 2-Gbit/s FC, 4GFC products are expected to cost about the same as lower-speed Fibre Channel devices. Meanwhile, 10 Gbit/s would be an estimated three to five times more expensive than current 2-Gbit/s products. And while 10-Gbit/s migrations will require replacing all existing 1- and 2-Gbit/s products, 4GFC technology is backward-compatible with lower-speed FC equipment. That means that when they're attached to 1- or 2-Gbit/s products, 4-Gbit/s devices will automatically run at those speeds.

In addition, supporters claim it makes sense to extend the 4-Gbit/s effort already under way on the disk-drive side to the SAN fabric. "There was a lot of discussion as 4-Gbit/s disk drives were being deployed," Jones says. "People were saying, 'We’ve got all the pieces. Why not make a fabric out of it?' " [Ed. note: Coco Chanel couldn't have said it better.]

So why was there so much resistance to moving to the new technology in the first place? QLogic's Berry says he thinks many people didn’t really understand all the issues. "There was a herd mentality that wasn’t necessarily based in user feedback," he says. "It’s amazing how many people were not aware that 10 Gbit/s wasn’t compatible with 1 Gbit/s."— Eugénie Larson, Reporter, Byte and Switch