10 Gigabit Ethernet Switch Blade for Large-Scale Blade Servers

The introduction of blade servers for diverse applications is expanding rapidly. The switch blade—a key network component of the blade server—must provide high performance to accommodate growing data-communication demands generated by network consolidation as in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), have a compact, low-power-consumption design, and have switch control software optimized for blade server systems. To meet these requirements, we have developed a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) switch blade suitable for large-scale blade servers. This paper focuses on the 10GbE switch LSI MB86C69, whose features have been optimized for blade servers, the high-speed transceiver circuit integrated into this LSI, and the switch control software for easy network configuration of switch blades.