Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/426320
n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 4 c g w 7 V I E W P O I N T vendors had off erings, but not all of them were good ones. T O D A Y, T O M O R R O W Today, 10gBase-T Ethernet is fairly common and runs over Cat6 cabling. There are inexpen- sive switches from the likes of Netgear, and there are now Thun- derbolt 10 gbE devices that can be used on Mac and Windows clients alike. This fundamental shi in the cost and deployment of 10 gb Ethernet has made the 4k shi viable and inevitable. There's no excuse not to begin planning for 4 k workfl ows by deploying 10gb Ethernet. To go one further, it also resur- rects a long-standing plumbing problem. If you are feeding your clients with 1 gb links, what kind of link do you run back to your server? Clearly, it can't be an- other 1 gb link. You can't feed 10 editors expecting 1gbE perfor- mance with a single 1gbE port on the server. Servers need 10gbE to feed those editors' worksta- tions. So with our new paradigm of 10 gb Ethernet to the desktop, what will we storage manufac- turers put in our servers? Have no fear. The Ethernet standards people already have the answer: 40 gb Ethernet. It exists, and we've been working on the drivers for Intel's 40 gbE controllers. The media type won't be familiar to most people (it'll be QSFP copper or optical), but for running short distances from a server to a switch, it's perfect. The inexorable advance of technology in speed and power isn't going to stop, and we all need to get used to it. It just keeps moving. We shouldn't be spending a lot of time marveling over 10 tb disk drives. In fact, we should come to expect that next year, we'll have 20 tb disk drives. What's been missing for many of us is an imperative to move with these new technologies. First and foremost, adopting new technology is risky. For most computer and technology com- panies, their main competition isn't the guy down the street, it's the status quo. Many users are happy to leave well enough alone, and without an imperative to change, they do just that. I believe these new 4 k compressed codecs are going to be the biggest technology revolution driver we've seen since ProRes was fi rst released. I believe the combination of 4 k ProRes and 10gb Ethernet over Thunderbolt is going to move us to a new plateau. However, keep in mind that it never stops. Don't marvel at today's impressive storage numbers and speeds. Think about next year's. Put your seat belts on, and let's get ready for 100 gb Ethernet! ¢ Steve Modica is CTO of Small Tree Communications (www.small-tree.com). He brings over 26 years of experience in the fi eld of high-performance operating systems to the company. Prior to founding Small Tree, he worked at Silicon Graphics, managing a group of device driver engineers and managing third-party vendor relationships. Amazing renderings and animations. In minutes. KeyShot is widely recognized as the fastest rendering soware on both Mac OS X and Windows for look dev and pre-viz concepts or creating promo art and production visuals. Fast. Easy. Amazing. This is KeyShot. Model by Dreamsmith www.dreamsmith.com www.dreamsmith.com Download at: Download at: keyshot.com/try/ keyshot.com/try/ KeyShot ® 5