Accelerator Cards Enhance Network Appliances

For secure network services and compression applications from 500 Mb/s to 6 Gb/s, the OCTEON XL CPB, NIC, and NICPro accelerator cards are available in 4-port Gigabit Ethernet NIC inline and co-processor configurations. They are reportedly the first to offer multi-function acceleration for IPsec, SSL, TCP, IPS/AV, and compression, as well as LAN bypass. The CPB coprocessor cards employ a CN38XX multi-core MIPS64 processor with engines for packet processing, QoS, TCP, security, and compression/decompression. The OCTEON XL NIC cards add four RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet ports to enable an inline NIC and to offload processing. Additionally, the OCTEON XL NICPro boards add 256 MB of RLDRAM2 for pattern matching/RegEx acceleration, an SPI4.2 system connector, and Gigabit Ethernet LAN bypass functionality. The cards are supported by a set of x86 software including a portable PCI-X driver and APIs. Prices range from $690 to $1,995 each/1,000. CAVIUM NETWORKS, Mountain View, CA. (650) 623-7000.