8-gig fibre channel

The Register reported last week that Emulex and Qlogic have announced the imminent availability of 8Gbps fibre channel products.

I have to ask the question...Is there any point?

Firstly, according to the article, the vendors of switch products aren't clarifying their position (both have 10Gb/s technology already). In addition, if a host can push data out at 8Gb/s levels, it will quickly overrun most storage arrays.

How many people out there are using 10Gb/s for anything other than ISLs? (In fact, I think 10Gb/s HBAs don't exist, please prove me wrong :-) ). How many people are even using them for ISLs? If you look at Cisco's technology you can see that you will still be limited to the speed of the line card (about 48Gb/s) even with 10Gb/s, so other than a few less ISL lines, what has it actually bought you?

I still think at this stage we need to focus on using the bandwidth we have; sensible layout and design and optimise fabric capacity.

One final point, presumably 8Gb/s devices will run hotter than existing 4Gb/s - even if we can't/don't use that extra capacity??