Tech Guide

摘要

Moore's Law is seen as the performance driver of the IT industry, but the rise in desktop performance has actually been bypassed by the sonic boom of bandwidth. So while IT managers already scratch their heads over multigigahertz desktop and notebook PCs, they can at least pretend that someday soon they might start using speech interfaces or some other chip-clogging application. The idea of an app that will force them to upgrade their entire enterprise to Gigabit Ethernet boggles many of their minds. That doesn't mean that a shift to gigabit networks won't happen. Indeed, it's already coming, particularly on LAN backbones. "I don't even think of 1 gig as a future technology anymore," says Judy Estrin, an Ethernet pioneer and serial entrepreneur who now runs Packet Design, which invests in networking startups. Estrin notes that network technologies evolve in a series of stages, some of which can happen in parallel, but all of which must be in place before companies can take full advantage of what they offer. High-speed optical devices need to be developed, along with semiconductors to support them and interface with systems, and then someone needs to figure out how to extend the technology from expensive fiber optics to standard copper wiring. Ethernet networks need broad connectivity throughout an enterprise, from the desktop (which usually starts with network interface cards and moves to networking chips built onto a PC motherboard) to routers and high-end switches in the company's backbone. For Gigabit Ethernet, PCs will optimally have a PCI Express bus interface, once PCs with that bus begin appearing next year.