OpenSolaris FCoE Target Code Released
Sun has released the source for the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) target driver on OpenSolaris. Note that this is a complete software implementation of FCoE - no special HBA is required. It will operate with a simple Ethernet NIC as hardware (e1000g/bge). It will interoperate with the Linux initiator from the Open-FCoE project.
Modern processors (with multiple cores and threads) have plenty of cycles to do software initiators and targets. Software initiators and targets for iSCSI are pretty much the norm (TCP offload never took off). In the case of FCoE, does it make economic sense to offload the Fibre Channel stack to an offload engine any more than the TCP/IP stack? But that's what many of the existing Fibre Channel HBA vendors are hoping for with FCoE - to sell you an offload stack and charge more for the NIC.
It's too early to tell how this new protocol will shake out in the products that survive in the market, but you can get started now with this newly released code. Download it, play with it, do some performance measurements and get involved in the OpenSolaris community.
