Cisco today unveiled the Nexus 7000 series networking switch boasting remarkable speeds of 15 terabits per second through a “unified fabric” architecture giving very high speed connections through very long distances. Cisco has invested around three years and $250 million into this technology which Doug Gourlay of Cisco describes as the most important product launch since the dawn of switches themselves.

A networking switch is designed to control the flow and direction of data quickly and efficiently between computers, and the Nexus 7000 has the same purpose, but with some significant differences. Aside from just an impressive bandwidth the switch family uses a hybrid type of connection which combines Fibre Channel and Infiniband cables with Ethernet cables giving a very high speed connection that is able to connect computers over great distances that the Fibre Channel and Infiniband cables were unable to do in the past. Distances between machines in this network will be measured in hundreds of miles instead of feet.

Cisco says the Nexus will be available sometime in the second half of 2008 starting out at around $75k and a typical system would run around $200k. They also have the networking switch being tried out by a few companies including Wachovia and Microsoft.

Release via Forbes