| Mellanox IPO goes big |
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| February 7, 2007 | |
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Six million shares of Mellanox launched today at $17, far above the expected range of $12-14. Does this signal major new life for InfiniBand? Unlikely.
Mellanox is one of two major InfiniBand semiconductor suppliers - the other being Qlogic - and also supplies host bus adapters (HBAs). Until now, they've been backed by some big names: Dell, IBM, Sun, Vitesse, and several venture cap firms. This 20% stake of 6M shares means Mellanox now has a market capitalization of $510M, on sales projected by analysts around $50M. It's been a good climate for storage IPOs, with Isilon, Double-Take, Riverbend, and CommVault coming public since mid-2006. The news for investors hasn't been great though: Riverbend has done nicely, doubling since mid-September, but the rest have jogged sideways. And there may be trouble lurking just over the horizon for Mellanox. Jag Bolaria, a senior analyst at the Linley Group, sees: "With 10-Gbit/s Ethernet coming, that will cast a dark shadow over InfiniBand." He expects traction for 10GigE in 2008. InfiniBand is making some headway in supercomputing and blade servers where SANs are important. But the noise is all but gone in VME space. We'll keep an eye on "MLNX" and any developments. |
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written by Chris Ciufo, February 14, 2007
One has to give Mellanox credit for sticking to their knitting for being consistent with InfiniBand Architecture (IBA). And in fairness, Ethernet doesn't have the heavy QoS capabilities that IBA offers - key features in certain mission critical apps. In storage area networks (SAN), DASD, and other enterprise installations, IBA may be the "pipe" of choice.
Still, it's tough to bet against Ethernet. Even some RapidIO developers keep a watchful eye on Ethernet because its sheer momentum in the consumer and business markets make it compelling. Even for a 40-year old technology. Who'da thunk it?
C2
written by Arthur M, February 23, 2007
Ethernet is good long range, it is the short distances where ethernet cant compete with infiniband. 10Gb ethernet will be maginally better then 1Gb ethernet but it will loose in both price and performance to 4x infiniband and 12x is already available (and has been for 2 years). Jag Bolaria, a senior analyst at the Linley Group is simply wrong. I just wish all-knowing analysts would sometimes employ r&d people and ask for an advice.