During the first half of calendar-year 2022,shipments of 25 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) adapters and controllers (NICs) posted a very robust 60% year-over-year growth, surpassing 10GbE shipments, according to a recent report from Crehan Research Inc. The growth propelled 25GbE shipments to more than 10 million ports, driving both record 25GbE and total server-class NIC shipments. Furthermore, 25GbE reached the 10 million port shipment milestone in less than half the time it took 10GbE to reach that number.
"The small price premium for two-and-a-half times more bandwidth, the rise of the hyper-scale cloud service provider segment, and the arrival of newer, bandwidth-hungry applications all contributed to the rapid market adoption of 25GbE," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research."
According to the Crehan report, 25GbE also ramped in conjunction with two alternative Ethernet NIC speeds that became available on the market concurrently, namely, 50GbE and 100GbE NICs. “The pace and size of the market’s adoption of 25GbE is even more impressive given the existence of these two other new NIC speeds on the market, both of which have also seen very strong growth," Crehan said.
In addition to the server-class NIC report, Crehan recently published a data center switch report showing that as with NIC shipments, 25GbE data center switch shipments also exceeded 10GbE data center switch shipments during the first half of calendar-year 2022.
