The latest accelerated Ethernet adapters from NetEffect extend the company’s network interface card family. The first, the NE0201Gb 1-Gbit/s adapter, plugs right into existing slots and immediately improves the performance of all data-center applications without requiring changes to existing network infrastructures or the applications themselves.
The NE0201Gb also is a low-risk stepping stone for enterprises planning a migration to 10-Gbit/s networks. It supports a broad range of industry-standard application programming interfaces (APIs) and protocols requiring no modification, re-compilation, or porting for existing applications. And, its latency is less than 8 µm. It comes in both dual- and quad-port configurations. Prices start at $795, with quantity discounts available.
The 10-Gbit/s NE020BCH accelerated Ethernet mezzanine adapter supports IBM’s BladeCenter H system. With this new, compact form-factor design (CFFh), BladeCenter H administrators can meet the performance demands of a blade server environment while making room for multiple expansion cards on a single blade, maximizing I/O network connectivity. Prices for the NE020BCH begin at $895 with volume discounts possible.
Both adapters use NetEffect’s patented Virtual Pipelined Architecture, which features a pipelined data-flow engine instead of a state machine and implements the IETF iWARP extensions to Ethernet. The iWARP standard uses the remote direct memory address (RDMA) protocol, which minimizes CPU usage and memory bottlenecks usually associated with TCP transfers.
This architecture also produces the lowest power consumption of any adapter of this class with less than 4 W per port. Other advantages include a latency of less than 6 µs, greater than 18-Gbit/s bi-directional bandwidth, higher server utilization, and virtualization support. And, only one adapter is needed to support networking, clustering, and storage.
NetEffect