INDUSTRY

Second Generation iWARP Ethernet Adapter Garners Broad Support Among Industry Leaders and Analysts: NetEffect today announced availability of the NE020 family of 10Gb and 1Gb iWARP Ethernet adapters that dramatically increase the performance of data center applications. As the first company to fully implement the IETF’s iWARP extensions to the Ethernet standard, NetEffect offers the lowest power 10Gb Ethernet adapter that delivers the highest performance and yet lowest CPU overhead compared to any competitive offerings currently available on the market. NetEffect’s unique patented Virtual Pipeline Architecture delivers scalable performance, minimal power requirements and a smaller die size for a more cost-effective solution. As a result of this powerful architecture, the NE020 provides concurrent support for all types of data communications traffic, each without compromise. NetEffect’s family of NE020 adapters delivers true convergence of multiple independent fabrics into a single, unified Ethernet network fabric. The high performance of the NE020 adapters makes them suitable for the most demanding networking, storage and clustering applications. The Lowest Power Adapter Available The NE020 adapter uses less than 6 watts of power for a single-port CX4, and less than 7 watts for a dual-port adapter, significantly less than competing solutions. By dramatically reducing networking power consumption, NetEffect provides an ideal solution for power-constrained high-density rack and blade computing environments. The Highest Performing Adapter Available The same characteristics of NetEffect’s Virtual Pipeline Architecture that dramatically reduce power consumption also drive the NE020 to a new level of Ethernet performance. The NE020 delivers superior networking functionality with throughput greater than 9Gbps (unidirectional) and 15.5Gbps (bi-directional), making it the first Ethernet adapter to provide more than 10Gbps to standard sockets-based applications and to process more than 2 million packets per second. With full RDMA capability, the NE020 requires less than 5 percent of the CPU to deliver maximum performance by offloading the networking overhead from the processor, providing more CPU cycles for applications. The NE020 runs industry-standard clustering applications with the lowest latency available for Ethernet - less than 7 µsec - and is competitive with even proprietary clustering fabrics. The adapter supports acceleration for thousands of simultaneous connections as needed by many data center applications. The NE020 is fully virtualized to allow a single adapter to deliver hardware performance (instead of software simulation) to multiple applications running on guest operating systems on virtualized servers. Extensive Hardware and Software Support • Accelerating data I/O for both block and file storage, the NE020 supports the full range of storage interfaces, including iSCSI, iSER, NFS and NFS/RDMA. • NetEffect offers broad support for clustering MPIs and APIs, including Intel MPI, HP MPI, MVAPICH2, Scali MPI and OpenFabrics interfaces, allowing existing scale-out applications (such as ABAQUS, LS-DYNA, Fluent, Oracle RAC, and many others) to run without any porting or application modification. • The NE020 family will provide single-port and dual-port 10Gb as well as dual-port and quad-port 1Gb configurations. • 10Gb and 1Gb adapters support multiple physical interfaces including CX4, SR, KX4, KR, 10GBASE-T and 1GBASE-T. Both 10Gb and 1Gb are native PCIe host interface. “We are extremely pleased to be introducing the NE020 family to the marketplace, following testing in both enterprise and research laboratory data centers, among them those of leading computer manufacturers,” said Rick Maule, CEO and president, NetEffect. “We’re proud to be able to deliver this level of performance and versatility while enabling greater server efficiency and productivity for our data center customers. With our low power solution, we are the first 10Gb Ethernet adapter company to dramatically address the pervasive concern of global IT Managers - increasing power consumption in the data center.” Broad Industry Support The NetEffect NE020 is earning praise from industry leaders and noted analysts for its performance and power advantages. “NetEffect has leveraged industry-standard Ethernet in such a way that it now scales to meet the rigorous demands of today's data centers,” said Steve Hunter, Distinguished Engineer and CTO, IBM BladeCenter. “By fully implementing the iWARP extensions to standard Ethernet, NetEffect has established 10Gb Ethernet's ability to be the high performance, low power solution that customers need for their networking, storage and clustering applications. At IBM, we are committed to 10GbE and believe it is the technology our customers want going forward as they move towards converged fabric within their data centers. NetEffect has demonstrated that iWARP enabled 10GbE adapters can provide the foundation for the unified fabric of the future.” “NetEffect is providing high performance Ethernet solutions that not only meet the high throughput demands of today's data centers but support the Green Grid initiative by significantly reducing network power consumption,” said Mike Goddard, senior director, Advanced Technology Planning and Performance Labs, AMD. “As one of the founding members of the Green Grid, AMD supports efforts to minimize power consumption throughout the data center. With iWARP Ethernet-enabled adapters, the three traditional networking fabrics can be unified into a single Ethernet network eliminating the cost and power consumption associated with extra switches, adapters and management consoles. NetEffect’s NE020 is designed to provide data center professionals with a common building block that provides higher throughput and reduced power consumption while simplifying data center operations and reducing operating expenses.” “NetEffect’s state machine architecture drives the high performance, low power features of the NE020,” said Dave Driggers, CTO of Verari Systems. “With one third the power consumption of other 10Gb Ethernet adapters on the market today, NetEffect is able to increase server efficiencies by reducing the power consumption for networking overhead and enabling those watts to be used for applications processing. As a server manufacturer, we are pleased to see new technologies that significantly improve server performance.” “The increased power density of current servers is bringing power and cooling concerns to the forefront of every IT executive's agenda, and this is true for both large enterprises and smaller companies,” said Jerald Murphy, a senior analyst with the Robert Frances Group. “IT executives should be evaluating power performance in vendor products, and requesting power consumption metrics in RFIs. In the last two months, almost every IT executive with whom RFG has talked has listed power and cooling as the number one issue with which they have to deal. Power and cooling considerations apply equally to networking gear as they do to servers. IT executives should consider networking technology from vendors that can increase performance, while at the same time improve overall power consumption.” “NetEffect's latest 10Gb iWARP Ethernet adapters significantly improve network performance, CPU utilization and power consumption to provide IT managers with more productive and efficient data center operations,” said Bob Wheeler, senior analyst with The Linley Group. “With their unique and patented architectural implementation, NetEffect is able to deliver the high throughput along with the low latency necessary to be among the best-of-breed for networking, storage and clustering applications. NetEffect's distinct advantage is their ability to handle all of these demanding applications at a price and power consumption that is competitive with basic 10GbE NICs.” Pricing and Availability The NE020 single-port 10Gb Ethernet adapter is available now with a list price of $895. The dual-port 10Gb adapter will be available within 90 days with a list price of $1195. Volume discounts will apply.