Voltaire switch to get Ethernet abilities

Voltaire, which has specialized in equipment for high-speed InfiniBand networking, announced new plug-in boards on Monday that support a high-speed version of conventional Ethernet networks. The new boards will mean Voltaire's 96-port and 288-port Grid Director switches will be able to route data using the latest Ethernet standard, which transfers data at up to 10 gigabits per second, as well as the new 20Gbps version of InfiniBand.

The new boards with the features will be available in the second quarter of 2007, the Billerica, Mass.-based company said. InfiniBand is used to link all the machines that collectively make high-end computing clusters, but advocates believe it will become popular for more conventional business tasks, such as those required for databases.