Cisco and Intel Fostering 10GbE in the Data Center SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 3, 2004 - Intel Corporation today introduced a 10-Gbps Ethernet (10GbE) adapter for servers that helps overcome for the first time the cost and technical barriers that have previously made 10GbE server connectivity impractical for the data center. "In the higher layers of the enterprise network, 10 GbE has proven its value in the aggregation of traffic among switches and in high-performance computing applications," said Hans Geyer, Intel vice president and general manager, Intel Networking and Storage Group. "With a substantial reduction in cost and an adapter in a form factor that fits standard servers, it now promises to fill a similar rapidly growing need in the data center because the proliferation of GbE to the desktop and evermore network intensive applications are demanding more bandwidth." According to analysts, making 10GbE server connectivity viable in the data center requires an adapter that is priced at less than $5,000* and operates on standard multimode fiber, which represents 90 percent of the optical cabling in data center networks.** The new Intel® PRO/10GbE SR Server Adapter is the first to meet both of these requirements. The server adapter utilizes XPAK optical technology to reduce the price over previous adapters by 40 percent, making it ideal for server bandwidth-intensive applications such as server clusters, network storage, medical imaging and graphic design.