A great question was asked by “Joe Smith” (if that’s his real name and let’s just say, yah, and the DJIA is back at 11,000 too) as a response to the FCoE Blog:

Mike, I'd like to know your opinion of Infiniband. It's clearly superior technology when compared to Ethernet and less expensive to deploy when compared to 10 GigE. Why do you feel it hasn't taken off?

I think everyone has thought about it, even my Uncle Al who is still waiting for his bailout.  Uncle Al says it’s because it isn’t popular enough. Thanks Al, keen insight.

I agree that often times what is superior doesn’t always win in the marketplace, and I agree that Infiniband is a great technology. 

When we first started designing our Axiom storage array it employed Infiniband (IB) on the back-end to connect the Slammers to our RAID controllers (which are in our Storage Enclosures).  I was sad to see Intel and Microsoft pull their support for a time, which effectively caused us to redesign using FC.  Of course now support has grown significantly, but the specter of 10Gbit Ethernet is causing the adoption of IB to slow for the same reason the HD-DVD versus BlueRay battle caused the high density follow on to DVD’s to stall; few people want to make much of a bet lest they end up on the wrong side of the outcome.

In low volume applications which are less cost-sensitive, the technology advantage mattered more than the cost, hence IB was adopted by folks that built HPC clusters and were linking Servers or Control Units together, just as Pillar was going to do.

The problem now is that you are betting on the relative power of Ethernet and its massive volume versus what has been a technology that has had relatively minor volume. Conventional wisdom holds that the “big boys” will win with volume over the technologists who might prefer IB.

So to be honest, IB is a niche of the network market. To break out of that niche some powerful economic barriers will need to be broken. With 10Gbit Ethernet coming on line it is hard for me to believe the world will shift large volumes into IB technology, hence I fear that a niche market may be all it gets to serve. And that niche might even shrink.