C-NIC runs at 10 Gbps rates.
Press Release Summary:
Suited for high volume server designs, NetXtreme II BCM57710 single-chip, dual-port converged network interface controller (C-NIC) enables simultaneous processing of network, storage, processor clustering, and management traffic on chip while enabling convergence of different traffic types over single Ethernet fabric. It is designed for bidirectional line rate performance and converges TCP, iSCSI, RDMA, and remote management traffic over 10 GbE with PCI Express® interface to host.
Original Press Release:
Broadcom Drives 10 Gigabit Ethernet Connectivity into Mainstream Servers with Industry's First Single-Chip, Dual-Port 10GBE C-NIC
IRVINE, Calif., May 14 -- Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ:BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced the industry's first true single-chip, dual-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) converged network interface controller (C-NIC) specifically developed for high volume server designs. Leveraging two field proven generations of Broadcom® NetXtreme® II Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) C-NICs, today's introduction marks an important milestone for Broadcom - successfully delivering the industry's first fully functional, single-chip C-NIC at 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) rates, with no external memory required. This new device completes the company's portfolio of 10GbE end-to-end solutions featuring market leading C-NICs, switches and physical layer devices (PHYs), enabling OEM partners to enhance next generation servers with a complete portfolio of 10GbE network infrastructure solutions from Broadcom.
In today's enterprise network, a standard server equipped with current Ethernet controller silicon is typically limited to 1Gbps rates. Moving to support a 10 times speed improvement to 10 Gbps rates would require additional support from the host CPU to process the data. This causes significant increase in the amount of processing power CPU would have to dedicate to communication versus its primary duty of running applications.
To address this challenge, Broadcom's new 10GbE C-NIC enables simultaneous processing of network, storage, processor clustering and management traffic on chip while enabling convergence of different traffic types over a single Ethernet fabric. By supporting Microsoft's Windows TCP chimney engine, iSCSI block storage and remote direct memory access (RDMA), the new C-NIC enables network protocol processing on-chip, thereby saving the server's CPU and memory I/O resources to perform their primary tasks - running applications. As a result, IT professionals can simplify their network designs by providing network, storage, clustering and management capabilities over existing and familiar TCP/IP and Ethernet infrastructures while boosting server performance through added network bandwidth and improvements in CPU utilization.
"Enterprise connectivity today is ready for a speed upgrade as the number of GbE ports required to support the server's bandwidth need has increased beyond 4GbE, driven by virtualization and I/O intensive applications running on multi-core CPUs. The market is now ready to adopt 10GbE as the next plateau for industry standard server connectivity with blade servers leading the transition," said Greg Young, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's High-Speed Controller line of business. "The increased bandwidth (to 10GbE) also provides an opportunity to converge disparate networking fabrics (data, storage, management, and processor clustering) by providing sufficient bandwidth for all traffic types. It is expected that most server OEMs will migrate to 10GbE as the new baseline for connectivity."
Announced today is the Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM57710 - the industry's first fully functional dual port C-NIC that runs at 10Gbps rates and supports small form factors and PCB footprints necessary for mass adoption and deployment. The BCM57710, a highly cost-optimized solution, is also part of the NetXtreme II C-NIC family - that allows the BCM57710 to provide an easy migration path to 10GbE by leveraging the NetXtreme II C-NIC family software already deployed in more than 70% of enterprise servers shipping today.
"Broadcom continues to define and drive Ethernet technology for the enterprise server space and has introduced many technological firsts over the years," said Bob Wheeler, Senior Analyst for The Linley Group. "The company is now taking its Ethernet solutions portfolio to the next level by including 10GbE offerings enabling a continuation of its technological leadership in Ethernet, and in particular, the enterprise server space."
Broadcom's new BCM57710 10GbE C-NIC is designed for bidirectional line rate performance, not seen from any other 10GbE device to date. A server running Broadcom's 10GbE C-NIC technology with Microsoft® Windows Server 2003 with TCP Chimney shows performance gain up to 6 times with C-NIC over standard layer 2 - with layer 2 delivering 4.7 Gbps at 99% CPU utilization while C-NIC technology with TCP Chimney support delivering line rate performance with 33% CPU utilization.
"Through the combination of our Scalable Networking technologies for Windows Server 2003 and the upcoming release of Windows Longhorn Server 'Longhorn,' IT professionals can cost-effectively easily benefit from 10Gbps performance by enabling offload with the Broadcom's BCM57710 C-NIC," said Henry Sanders, General Manager of Windows core networking group, Microsoft Corporation. "Microsoft and Broadcom have enjoyed a long relationship developing TCP offload solutions and we are pleased to now enable bidirectional line-rate offload at 10Gbps speeds."
"Broadcom's flow-through architecture for 10GbE C-NIC is a great achievement. The ability to enable a 10GbE C-NIC in a small package without requiring external memory is ideal for space-optimized server applications requiring 10Gbps networking speeds," said Steven Hunter, Distinguished Engineer & CTO, IBM BladeCenter, IBM Corporation. "IBM currently offers 1Gbps C-NIC solutions in its servers and looks forward to expanding its current 10Gbps offering in the future. Having the protocol processing occur on the C-NIC enables line rate networking bandwidth without over-burdening the host resources."
"We are pleased to collaborate with Broadcom to validate PCI Express version 2.0 designs and to provide our common customers a smooth transition to our next generation technologies," said Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives, Intel Corporation. "PCI Express version 2.0 increases bus speed from 2.5 Gbps to 5 Gbps per lane enabling much higher I/O densities for next generation servers."
"Broadcom's BCM57710 adopts an innovative follow-through, no external memory architecture and has a full suite of software," said Vinod Lakhani, Director of Marketing for Broadcom's High-Speed Controller line of business. "Since competitive solutions do not include full C-NIC functionality, they lack some level of protocol processing or require additional external components that cannot be integrated in a single-chip design. As a result, today's host CPUs are busy terminating protocol stacks in the absence of on- chip protocol processing technologies, making Broadcom's 10GbE C-NIC technology essential for next generation servers."
Technical Information
Broadcom's single-chip BCM57710 C-NIC converges TCP, iSCSI, RDMA, and remote management traffic over 10GbE with PCI Express® (a high-speed peripheral interconnect technology designed to accommodate higher speed CPUs) interface to the host. The BCM57710 includes key features that set it apart from the competition and is based on a flow-through architecture that eliminates the need for external memory, which is essential for lowering the cost of 10GbE to enable its widespread adoption. The BCM57710's intelligent and innovative protocol stack processing completely eliminates the need for large memory banks otherwise required for 10 Gbps data rates support. It is also optimized for line rate performance for small I/O sizes which are predominant in the data center and a challenging achievement for a 10GbE C-NIC solution.
The BCM57710 is also optimized for low latency that is not available from any other 10GbE controller solution. Clustering applications benefit directly from low latency and the BCM57710's lower total cost of ownership (via Ethernet) makes it a preferred solution for RDMA applications.
The BCM57710 supports a complete ecosystem for server LOMs. This ecosystem includes features such as iSCSI boot, pre-boot execution environment (PXE), and universal management port (UMP) or DMTF's Network Controller - Sideband Interface (NC-SI) to enable interfacing to baseboard management controllers (BMCs). Broadcom's BCM5221 single-port 10BaseT/100Base-TX transceiver is also available to connect directly to a system management processor compatible with the DMTF NC-SI specifications.
Availability and Pricing
The Broadcom BCM57710 10GbE C-NIC is now sampling to early access customers. Volume production is expected during the fourth quarter of 2007. Pricing is available upon request.
About Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation is a major technology innovator and global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom products enable the delivery of voice, video, data and multimedia to and throughout the home, the office and the mobile environment. We provide the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art, system-on-a-chip and software solutions to manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices. These solutions support our core mission: Connecting everything®.
Broadcom is one of the world's largest fabless semiconductor companies, with 2006 revenue of $3.67 billion, and holds over 2,000 U.S. and 800 foreign patents, more than 6,000 additional pending patent applications, and one of the broadest intellectual property portfolios addressing both wired and wireless transmission of voice, video and data.
Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. Broadcom may be contacted at +1.949.926.5000 or at www.broadcom.com.
Broadcom Trade Press Contact
Mike He
Public Relations Manager
408-922-8083
mhe@broadcom.com
Broadcom Technical Contacts
Burhan Masood
Product Line Manager,
10GbE Controllers
949-926-8634
bmasood@broadcom.com
Source: Broadcom Corporation; BRCM Enterprise Networking
Web site: www.broadcom.com/
