The InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) has tickled the widgetry's roadmap.

It now shows 4x EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) ports at 100 Gb/s (that's 25 Gb/s per lane), which should be reflected in adapters and switches in late 2011, early 2012.

That's up from the previous forecast of less than 80 Gb/s by 2011 and roughly a 3x data rate increase from where things are now. Of course that old 2011 forecast was two years ago and since then the demand for higher throughput has ballooned.

It's also a jumping off spot for ever higher speeds.

The projected new speeds are supposed to result in enhanced cost/performance and networks that support multi-core processors and accelerators fancied in HPC, and increasingly in enterprise and cloud networks.

In case the EDR nomenclature is unfamiliar that's because it's a new version of InfiniBand distinct from the current QDR. IBTA's also come up with a new midrange version called FDR (Fourteen Data Rate) that calls for 56 Gb/s (4x 14 Gb/s lanes).

The new roadmap details 1x, 4x, 8x and 12x EDF and FDR incorporating 64/66 encoding with bandwidths reaching EDR data rate of 300 Gb/s next year. Mellanox' Brian Sparks says it's a matter of keeping up with systems-level performance.