Gen 5 Fibre Channel is the marketing name for purpose-built, data center network infrastructure for storage that provides reliability, scalability and up to 16 Gbit/s performance adopted by Brocade, Emulex, and QLogic.
Brocade platforms with Gen 5 Fibre Channel are positioned for high-density server virtualization, cloud architectures, and next generation flash and SSD storage.
[3] Emulex first introduced Gen 5 Fibre Channel in a press release announcing ecosystem and partner adoption of Gen 5 Fibre Channel HBAs for flash storage and SAN appliances.
[4] In conjunction, the Emulex LightPulse LPe1600B HBAs were re-positioned as "The PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 LPe16000B Gen 5 Fibre Channel (16GFC/8GFC/4GFC) Host Bus Adapters" [5] QLogic first introduced Gen 5 Fibre Channel in during the Q1 2013 earnings call on July 25, 2013.
After Emulex launched their rebranded HBAs with the Gen 5 Fibre Channel branding, the Register's Chris Mellor captured this debate in an article about the controversy.