The need to handle expanding server and storage workloads and provide critical business services will fuel demand for InfiniBand high bandwidth interconnect technology, experts predict.

New research from IDC suggests that high-performance computing (HPC), scale-out database environments, shared virtualised I/O, and increasing demands from financial applications will propel worldwide InfiniBand host channel adaptor factory revenues from $62.3m in 2006 to $224.7m in 2011.

Additionally, factory revenue from InfiniBand switch port sales is expected to grow from $94.9m in 2006 to $612.2m in 2011.

The study noted that InfiniBand has been gaining share in the Top 500 supercomputer sites for HPC and has doubled its share for usage in these sites in each of the past two years.

InfiniBand has continued to gain share as a preferred interconnect technology at these supercomputing sites, at the expense of some more widely used systems.

"Chief information officers are looking beyond point solutions and treating the data centre more holistically," said Steve Josselyn, research director for IDC's Global Enterprise Server Solution.

"There is evidence that InfiniBand is beginning to find its way into commercial data centres for use in support of applications and workloads with HPC-like characteristics.

"As the need for more of these types of application increases in the commercial world, InfiniBand provides a viable and cost-effective alternative to existing network infrastructures."