The Ethernet Alliance and the Road to 100G Alliance are to join forces in an effort to promote the high-speed networking industry.

The two groups intend to push the use of 40GB and 100GB Ethernet. Standards for the two transmission technologies are currently being investigated by the IEEE.

"The demand for bandwidth is growing in every market segment, from consumer to enterprise to service and content providers," said Brad Booth, chairman of the Ethernet Alliance.

"The Ethernet Alliance praises the Road to 100G Alliance and its members on highlighting the challenges of 100G, and is honoured that they believe the Ethernet Alliance is the organisation to further their goal.

"Given the alignment of our visions and strategies, the combination of our two organisations will greatly advance the development of the high-speed Ethernet ecosystem, benefiting customers worldwide."

However, many in the high performance computing (HPC) field are sceptical about the demand for 40GB Ethernet in light of continued delays and competing technologies to the current 10GB Ethernet standard.

Philip Pokorny, chief architect at Linux HPC system builder Penguin Computing, told vnunet.com that many buyers are unsure of the usefulness of 10GB Ethernet.

"10GB vendors are very anxious to see 2008 as the year of 10GB Ethernet," he said. "Just like they hoped 2007 and 2006 would be."

This view was echoed by other system builders, which believe that competing technologies are more attractive to HPC buyers.

"In the HPC field most customers see Infiniband as the dominant solution, at least for a while," John Lee, vice president of advanced technology solutions at HPC specialist Appro, told vnunet.com.