HPCwire: Netronome Intros High Performance Network Processor Card

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October 06, 2006

Netronome Intros High Performance Network Processor Card

Netronome Systems, Inc., a provider of deep packet inspection, content flow and virtual machine technologies, has announced the availability of its first high-performance network co-processor card which is designed to significantly boost performance in IA/x86-based network and security applications. Designed for OEMs, the Netronome Flow Engine (NFE-i8000) can be used to increase performance of existing applications or as an easy-to-use development environment enabling users to quickly and develop high performance networking and security applications, speeding time to market by reducing development time for new or upgraded applications.

"IXP devices are a standard in the research community, so it is important for our academic research laboratory to have access to the latest IXP2855," said Tilman Wolf, D.Sc., assistant professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts. "PCI has been a bottleneck, and using the Netronome PCI Express interface is a huge step forward. The card is really loaded, not just in regards to IXP, but TCAM and PKI accelerator as well. Additionally, the high speed low latency from IXP to IA is very important to us as we see IA/IXP coupling as an important area for our research."

Leveraging the Netronome developed PCI Express interface and "zero copy" drivers along with the Intel IXP2855 network processor and Intel IXCP210 cryptographic accelerator, the NFE-i8000 acts as a tightly integrated network co-processor for IA/x86 servers, supporting up to 4 Gbps throughput with high performance encryption. Additional features include:

PCI Express x4 card with four active lanes;
Netronome-developed custom PCI Express interface ensuring high speed low latency transfers between IXP and IA, offering significantly higher speeds while dramatically reducing CPU overhead;
Support for multi-processor motherboards and multi-core processors; and,
4x 1 Gigabit SFP ports for flexible connectivity.

Additionally, the NFE-i8000 hardware cryptography acceleration includes an integrated symmetric crypto unit, integrated asymmetric public key co-processor and true random number generator. A mezzanine expansion connector provides support for future co-processors such as pattern matching etc.

"IXP-based applications (IXP1200, IXP2400 and IXP2800) make up a considerable part of the market, over time the challenges with network performance, bus capacity and the amount of power they require have become more apparent," said Niel Viljoen, CEO of Netronome. "We designed the NFE-i8000 to address these needs and provide three overall benefits to application developers: increased performance and lower power consumption for existing applications, a high performance PCI Express interface and the ability to cut the time and cost typically associated with bringing new products to market."

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