Despite these projections, 100GE remains far from being a mainstream technology. Even 10-Gigabit Ethernet is just starting to be used for server interfaces, albeit at a growing rate. The global market for 10-Gigabit Ethernet server interfaces was nearly $100 million in the fourth quarter, up 57 percent from a year earlier, research firm Dell'Oro Group reported this week. Some types of products for this technology are just beginning to reach the market. At the Ethernet event, Broadcom showed off its first server adapter based on the 10GBase-T specification, which uses standard Ethernet cabling and can reach 100 meters. It is expected to ship in commercial volumes in the second quarter.

Because of pricing and other issues, most observers don't expect 100GE to be widely used until 2013 in service providers and at least 2015 in data centers.

"100 Gigabits is a lot of bandwidth, and most environments haven't even figured out how to consume 10 gigabits," said Greg Scherer, vice president of server and storage strategy in Broadcom's High Speed Controller Business Unit.

The IDG News Service