Intel has lifted the wrappers on a 10GBase-t network adapter which sports a pair of 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The X52-T2 adapter would be the first to have two ports on a single adapter.

Designed for servers, the PCI-Express card will support connection distances of up to 100 meters. In its press release Intel said that by placing a pair of ports on the card, administrators will have a redundant connection in case anything went bang.

It means that administrators can pair the connections to create a single pipeline running at 20GbE speeds. The cards are the first to use Intel's Single Root I/O Virtualisation platform. This is designed to provide better communication between physical network inputs and virtualized machines. This means that virtualized systems can operate at nearly identical speeds to direct physical I/O connections.

No word on price yet.