ACADEMIA

Introduces OpenOnload Application Acceleration Middleware Update, Extending Its Lead in Low Latency, High Message Rate Performance

Solarflare has announced multiple patent wins on technology critical to ensuring robust and full POSIX compatible user-level networking for industry standard 10G Ethernet networks. New updates to its popular OpenOnload application acceleration middleware further improve its market leading performance. OpenOnload—and the technology underlying the new patents—enable Solarflare to deliver five critical customer needs:

• Low latency at high message rates. Solarflare delivers not only low minimum latency, but also the lowest latency at millions of messages per second, a performance point that customers routinely use and rely on.
• High maximum message rates. Solarflare delivers over 4 million TCP messages per second on a single port, more than 30% higher than the nearest competitor.
• Low jitter. Solarflare has achieved 0µsec (zero) in standard industry benchmarks, while the nearest competitor experiences jitter of greater than 20%.
• Application compatibility. Solarflare is the pioneer in POSIX compatible user-level networking, with thousands of applications deployed at hundreds of customers over the past five years of production shipments, including most major exchanges and financial institutions around the world.
• TCP protocol compliance. Solarflare is the pioneer in user-level TCP networking and is widely recognized as the industry leader in providing enterprise-hardened solutions. Solarflare's TCP technology ensures robust network performance.

"Across the financial services industry there are literally hundreds of different applications in production with OpenOnload, ranging from high-frequency trading to matching engines," said Dr. Steve Pope, CTO at Solarflare. "These applications can be very complex and are often mission critical. They frequently explore the entire POSIX API and require extreme multi-threaded performance. OpenOnload has a proven track record of supporting and accelerating applications across the industry and enjoys a well deserved reputation for compatibility, robustness, performance, plus ease of deployment and use."

Solarflare's OpenOnload is an open source network stack that accelerates application performance, while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Unlike Infiniband-based RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) technologies, such as RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet), OpenOnload uses industry standard network protocols (TCP/IP, UDP), industry standard Ethernet networks, and is fully compatible with all applications. The latest version of OpenOnload features several enhancements, such as a zero-copy API that accelerates UDP multicast receive and TCP transmit, which are two critical bottlenecks high frequency traders are looking to accelerate.

"Solarflare is the recognized leader in Ethernet-based, low-latency networking and these newly awarded patents are proof of Solarflare's continuing innovation in network application acceleration," said Mike Smith, vice president and general manager of Host Solutions at Solarflare. "OpenOnload is the only product on the market that delivers low latency and high message rate network performance, while maintaining full compatibility with customer applications."

The patents granted include:

• US Patent 7769923 - Interrupt Management for Multiple Event Queues
• US Patent 7634584 - Packet Validation in Virtual Network Interface Architecture
• US Patent 7844782 - Data Processing System with Memory Access
• US Patent 8005916 - User Level Stack
• US Patent 8006252 - Data Processing System with Intercepting Instructions
• European Patent 1787207 - Dynamic Resource Allocation
• European Patent 1891787 - Data Processing System
• European Patent 1966950 - Processing Received Data