The scientists working on the project also need massive bandwidth because they run analytical programs against the hundreds of terabytes of data collected over several months. 'I'm pretty sure can saturate it,' Mallick said.

In general, InfiniBand today is being targeted at the scientific and government communities for transaction-heavy loads requiring high bandwidth. Some InfiniBand switches, such as the one from SilverStorm Technologies Inc., are already hitting 20Gbit/sec. throughput, leaving Fibre Channel and Ethernet at 4Gbit/sec. and 1Gbit/sec., respectively, in the dust. Engenio's system currently supports 10Gbit/sec. data rates, and the company eventually aims to extend that to 20Gbit/sec.

When InfiniBand was first introduced several years ago, it was touted as being a far faster server-to-storage networking technology, with throughput speeds of 10Gbit/sec. But the technology failed to gain momentum largely because of distance limitations. It only works well at distances of up to 30 feet, analysts said.

Now InfiniBand is making a slow comeback as a backbone technology for storage and server clusters and for use within the data center as a server-storage interconnect. The most telling event regarding the re-emergence of InfiniBand came with Cisco Systems Inc.'s purchase of switch maker Topspin Communications Inc. in April for $250 million, said Tony Asaro, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass.

IBM last year also signed a five-year agreement to resell Topspin's InfiniBand switches.