Intel wants to prove that it’s not only good at making CPU-related stuff, but also knows a thing or two about networking and high-speed Internet connections. A few days ago, Intel demoed 10 Gigabit per second speeds over copper wires, something that previously seemed quite impossible for some networking engineers. 10Gbit/s network speeds aren’t exactly out of the ordinary these days, but these were only achieved by using fiber optic wires, which are certainly more expensive than copper ones.

The 10GbE over copper is currently destined to be implemented only in Server NICs which will support both 1GbE and 10GbE speeds, so that companies that are already using 1GbE switches can install these NICs and be prepared for the transition to 10GbE in the future.

The most efficient transfer speed for the 10GbE technology is reached over up to 328 feet using CAT 6a cabling or up to 180 feet when using CAT 6 cabling. The new NICs feature a technology called VMDq that will be able to handle the sorting of data from servers running virtual server operating systems and will be able to offload much of the process to the special processor integrated in the NIC card.

Intel’s 10 Gbit Server Adaptor is supposed to be priced at $999 and should be available towards the end of May. With prices like these, consumer-grade motherboards won’t be incorporating 10GbE NICs any time soon.