SMC Networks SMC10GPCIe-XFP manual Introduction, Advanced Features

Chapter 1: Introduction

The SMC TigerCard™ 10G 10GBASE-T and XFP Ethernet Server Adapters combine the speed and performance of cutting edge networking with the ease of deployment and user friendliness of traditional Ethernet. The speed and efficiency of 10G networking coupled with iSCSI support enables converged networking, reducing cost and the complexity of wiring, and simplifying management. SMC’s VNIC architecture provides the key to efficient server I/O and is flexible enough to be applied to multiple server deployment scenarios. These deployment scenarios are:

•Kernel Driver – This deployment uses a single instance of a VNIC interface for standard operating drivers. This interface provides a performance-optimized path for the kernel TCP/IP stack and contention-free access from the driver, resulting in extremely low latency and competitive CPU efficiency.

•Accelerated Virtual I/O – The second deployment scenario greatly improves I/O for virtualized operating systems. The SMC VNIC architecture provides thousands of protected interfaces to the host system, granting any application or virtualized (guest) operating system direct access to the network hardware. This hypervisor bypass technology, unique to SMC Ethernet controllers, is the only way to provide solid I/O performance to virtualized guest operating systems.

Advanced Features

•Virtual NIC Support – The core of SMC’s technology. Protected VNIC interfaces can be instantiated for each running guest operating system or application, giving it a direct pipeline to the Ethernet network. This architecture provides the most efficient way to maximize network and CPU efficiency. The SMC Ethernet controller supports up to 4096 VNIC interfaces.

•PCI Express – Implements PCI Express 1.1.

•Plug-and-Play– Provides binary compatibility with all data center and HPC applications.

•10 Gigabit Ethernet – 10 times the throughput of 1G Ethernet, 10G enables the ability to design a cost-effective, high-performance 10 Gigabit Ethernet solution.

•iSCSI Support – Reduced TCO (total cost of ownership) for shared storage and converged fabrics.

•iSCSI Acceleration in Virtual Environment – Reduce CPU utilization, lower networking latency, improved machine utilization, and easier management.

•RSS – Receive Side Scaling raises the utilization levels of multi-core servers dramatically by distributing I/O load across all CPUs and cores.

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