The unassuming adapter between a server and its storage has a surprisingly eventful history. Emulex turned that narrow assignment into an enterprise business, took an expensive detour, and now carries Broadcom’s ambitions for encrypted storage networks.
For two decades, Chelsio has sold a stubbornly practical idea: the network card should do more of the networking. Its seventh-generation platform now carries that bet into 400Gb Ethernet, GPU clusters and a market crowded with much larger chip companies.