SCIENCE

Interface Masters Technologies has announced 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10Gb) Smart Network Adapters. The Niagara 710 fully offloads secure network services, packet classification and network protocols processing from the host CPU to handle high speed network traffic up to 10 Gbps. The Smart Network Adapter comes in PCI-e form factor and is targeted at Networking and Security Appliances, Servers and Storage Systems. The Niagara 710 is based on Freescale Semiconductor's QorIQ P4080 processor, which integrates eight e500 Power Architecture cores, dual 10Gb fiber interfaces, up to 8GByte of DDR3, PCI-e x8 in a full height half length PCI-Express form factor. This PCI-e adapter addresses a broad range of systems and applications including L2-L7 switches, WAN optimization, Storage Equipment, Monitoring systems and packet generator testers. Interface Masters Technologies will be presenting the Adapter in Booth #2645 at the RSA conference in San Francisco.

"Our collaboration with Interface Masters gives OEMs a development platform for high performance hardware accelerated 10G network processing that is easily integrated into modular datacenter appliances," said Nikolay Guenov, Segment Manager for Enterprise and Datacenter with Freescale's Networking Processor Division. "Freescale's advanced QorIQ technology is ideally suited for high performance processing, combining outstanding performance with multiple hardware accelerators and extremely low operating power."

"Niagara 710 offers a compelling value proposition for emerging cloud and data center applications and we are excited about partnering with Interface Masters and Freescale in developing complete software solution for the adapter that includes packet processing and classification, offload and inline processing and virtualization," said Prasad Vellanki, CEO of One Convergence.

Niagara 710 provides features that are essential in today's data center applications:

• QorIQ P4080E QorIQ multicore communications processor, built on Power Architecture technology
  • 1.3GHz core operation (upgradable to 1.5GHz)
• Memory
  • Dual 1GB DDR3 SoDIMM (upgradeable to 2 GB per socket)
  • 128 MB NOR flash memory
  • 16 MB SPI ROM
• Dual 10G SPF+ cage
• Management port 1000BaseTX with RJ45 connector
• mini SD/MMC card slot
• USB Type A port
• Serial console port
• Battery backed RTC
• Software tools
  • Linux 2.6.35 or later kernel
  • LTIB SDK
  • Host interface tools
  • Cross compile and native GNU tool chain

"With growing demand for high speed packet processing Interface Masters is pleased to cooperate with Freescale and One Convergence to provide a leading solution addressing the 10Gb and 40Gb networking market with Freescale's P4080 multi core high speed and low power CPU," stated Ehud Yuhjtman, President of Interface Masters. "This powerful smart NIC has the flexibility to address the needs of a variety of markets including data security, traffic classification/load balancing and cloud computing application."

Availability

Niagara 710 is designed for system integrators and server providers that support the Telecommunications, ISP, IT Network Security, UTM, Storage Area Networks (SAN), Intrusion Detection & Prevention and WAN Acceleration markets. The product will be available for evaluation by mid March 2011 for qualified projects and will be in full production early Q2 2011.