Multifunctional Accelerator Cards suit network appliances.

Press Release Summary:



Featuring standard PCI/PCI-X form-factor, OCTEON XL cards are offered in range of 4-port Gigabit Ethernet NIC inline and co-processor configurations that deliver performance rates from 500 Mbps to 6 Gbps. Products are suited for secure network services and compression acceleration in appliances and storage systems. They offer multi-function acceleration for IPsec, SSL, TCP, IPS/AV, and compression as well as high-availability LAN bypass features.



Original Press Release:



Cavium Networks Introduces Highest Performance Line of Multi-function Accelerator Cards for Network Appliances and Storage Applications



OCTEON XL Accelerator Cards Target Secure Network Services and Compression Applications From 500Mbps to 6Gbps Rates

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 24 /-- Cavium Networks, a world leader in security, network services and embedded processor solutions, today announced immediate availability of OCTEON XL Accelerator cards targeted at secure network services and compression acceleration in Appliances and Storage Systems. The standard PCI/PCI-X form-factor cards, which are offered in a broad range of 4-port Gigabit Ethernet NIC inline and co-processor configurations, deliver the industry's highest performance from 500Mbps to 6Gbps, enabling the fastest time to market for existing system configurations. The OCTEON XL cards are the first to offer multi-function acceleration for IPsec, SSL, TCP, IPS/AV and compression, as well as high-availability LAN bypass features. They also provide optional flexibility to add proprietary capabilities through full C-programmability of the on-board OCTEON multi-core MIPS64 processor. The OCTEON XL accelerator cards are being rapidly adopted by leading Tier-1 vendors for security and networking appliances and storage products as the fastest way to deliver advanced security and application acceleration.

Rapid Acceleration for all x86 Appliances and Storage Systems

Many current-generation UTM appliances, L4-L7 switches, application gateways, and storage systems have been built using x86-based motherboards with PCI/PCI-X connectivity. With the rapidly-increasing demand for multi-gigabit security and application processing, vendors of this equipment are looking for a way to quickly roll-out new features and increased performance and availability within their current platforms. Cavium's OCTEON XL Accelerator cards offer a ready-to-deploy solution to rapidly add multi-gigabit acceleration for compression/decompression, pattern-matching (RegEx), IPsec/SSL processing, and TCP termination. With OCTEON XL, all of this acceleration is simultaneously supported in a single card, as opposed to using multiple single-function cards. The Gigabit Ethernet NIC configuration allows for reduced PCI-X bus utilization resulting in higher overall system performance. The LAN bypass feature in the OCTEON XL NICPro supports the essential high-availability requirement of inline security appliances and load-balancing systems. Additionally, the optional, C-based programmability of the OCTEON processor on these cards enables OEM customers to add custom processing capabilities to enable differentiated features and future upgradeability.

"Many security- and storage-appliance vendors utilize standard x86-based off-the-shelf designs today," said Bob Wheeler, senior analyst at The Linley Group. "With these new accelerator cards, Cavium is enabling these appliance-OEM customers to quickly increase their system performance using a single existing PCI-X slot. Unlike conventional crypto cards, the OCTEON cards enable OEMs to offload additional CPU-intensive functions such as TCP termination and compression."

The OCTEON XL CPB, NIC, and NICPro Families of Accelerator Cards

The OCTEON XL Accelerator Cards are available in a full-height, half-length, 64bit/133MHz PCI-X form factor. The cards are offered in three distinct families with a range of processor performance, I/O, and additional features to meet a wide range of customer requirements.

The OCTEON XL CPB Coprocessor cards include an OCTEON CN38XX Multi-core MIPS64 Processor with integrated acceleration engines for packet processing, QoS, TCP, Security, and Compression/Decompression. Dual ECC-protected, Mini-DIMM DDR2 memory slots provide 512MB to 8GB of capacity at DDR2-533 or DDR2-667 rates. The cards integrate serial and E-JTAG ports for user console and debug connectivity.

The OCTEON XL NIC cards add four RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet ports to the OCTEON XL CPB feature set to enable inline NIC (network interface card) as well as host offload processing.

The OCTEON XL NICPro boards adds several features to support the highest level of acceleration and high-availability, including 256MB RLDRAM2 for pattern matching/RegEx acceleration, SPI4.2 system connector enabling cascading of multiple cards and unique GbE LAN bypass functionality to provide automatic port bypass on failure.

OCTEON XL cards enable industry's highest performance for a broad range of functions within a single PCI-X card:

1. Compression/Decompression performance of up to 6Gbps for GZIP, PKZIP and variant protocols with unmatched compression ratios. Compression ratios exceed 4:1 for typical web traffic, which are 2x that of alternative solutions.
2. SSL and IPsec processing of up to 10Gbps.
3. RSA Performance of up to 16,000 RSA operations/s.
4. TCP offload performance of up to 10Gbps
5. Pattern matching performance of up to 4Gbps.

OCTEON XL Accelerator Card Software Support

The OCTEON XL card family is supported by a rich set of x86 host system software, including a portable PCI-X driver and API's for compression/decompression, SSL, TCP, IPsec, and crypto processing.

For users looking to add proprietary features to the OCTEON XL Cards, development support is also provided for standard operating systems including Linux(R), MontaVista(R) Linux and Wind River(R) VxWorks(R) along with a thin executive for fast-path data-plane software. Cavium Networks provides a complete Software Development Kit with Linux, GNU tool-chain, GDB development environment and popular third party tool-chain and development support that enables thousands of C/C++ applications to be easily ported. Additionally, Cavium Networks provides APIs and production quality source code software toolkits for IPsec, SSL, and TCP stacks for customization.

"Cavium's NITROX XL cards have been highly successful in delivering leading security performance and reducing time to market for a large number of our OEM customers," said Rajiv Khemani, Vice President of Marketing at Cavium Networks. "Now with OCTEON XL accelerator cards, we are using a similar approach, targeting a wide range of applications for network services and storage systems. These cards will fuel increased performance and functionality at multi-gigabit rates in a broad range of systems, without requiring hardware re-design."

Availability and Pricing

Samples for OCTEON XL accelerator cards are available now. Pricing ranges from $690 to $1995 in 1K quantities, depending on configuration and processor option.

About Cavium Networks

Cavium Networks is a world leader in security, network services and embedded processor solutions. Cavium Networks' award-winning NITROX(R) and MIPS64-based OCTEON families of processors and accelerator boards offer flexible, scalable and highly integrated solutions delivering 50Mbps to 10Gbps performance. The company's products are integrated into a wide range of networking equipment that include routers, gateways, network appliances, content switches, wireless LAN access/aggregation points, servers and storage networking devices. Cavium Networks is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley in Mountain View, CA with development centers in Marlboro, MA and Hyderabad, India. For more information, please visit: http://www.caviumnetworks.com/

NOTE: OCTEON(TM) and NITROX(R) are trademarks of Cavium Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

CONTACT: Angel Atondo of Cavium Networks Marketing, +1-650-623-7033, or angel.atondo@caviumnetworks.com

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