Cavium Unveils Industry’s Most Advanced 10/25/40/50Gbps Ethernet NIC Family

FastLinQ® 41000 Series enable Next Generation Cloud Data center and Enterprise with a Flexible, Future Proof, Secure and comprehensive networking and storage solution

The unprecedented growth in demand for bandwidth is driving data center networks to be scalable and offer on-demand bandwidth provisioning and application agility. Data centers are expanding at a rapid pace as is the virtualization and container density for compute, driving the need for higher bandwidth between the server and switches. 25GbE, a new standard in networking, leverages the maximum potential of Multi-core processors, NVMe flash storage and cloud architectures to deliver 2.5 times the performance, reducing the power and cost per gigabit significantly[1]. Although the cost, power and performance benefits of 25Gbps Ethernet technology are undisputed, enterprise and cloud data centers investing in 25GbE also require a flexible and highly interoperable solution.

This can be a challenge considering the mix of pre-standard and standard-based 25GbE products in the market. In addition, the recent spurs in malware-led intrusion and data theft are driving private and public cloud networks to ensure that only trusted and validated software components get deployed. Enterprise and cloud data centers also have differing requirements driven by infrastructure and application workloads for latency and congestion management, so flexibility of the networking solution is key. Cavium FastLinQ 41000 Series family effectively addresses these challenges while delivering a flexible and future proof networking solution.

The FastLinQ QL41000 family is the second generation of standards compliant 25/50GbE NICs and the industry’s only NIC adapter family that delivers customers the technology choice and investment protection with support for concurrent RoCE, RoCEv2 and iWARP – Universal RDMA.  The FastLinQ adapters coupled with leading server and networking platforms enable enterprise data centers to optimize their infrastructure costs and increase virtual machine density by leveraging built-in technologies like concurrent SR-IOV and NIC Partitioning (NPAR) that deliver acceleration and QoS for tenant workloads and infrastructure traffic.

Additionally, the FastLinQ adapters provide full Network Function Virtualization with excellent small packet performance with integration into DPDK and OpenStack enabling Cloud and Telcos/NFV customers to seamlessly deploy, manage and accelerate the most demanding artificial intelligence, Big Data, CDN and Machine Learning workloads. Storage Acceleration and offloads like NVMe-oF™, NVMe-Direct, iSCSI, iSER and FCoE built into the FastLinQ QL41000 enable seamless upgrade paths from existing storage paradigms to next generation NVMe and persistent memory semantics. Enabling zero-touch automatic speed and FEC selection, Cavium FastLinQ SmartAN™ technology virtually eliminates interoperability challenges in physical layer networks.

“The addition of FastLinQ 41000 Series of highly optimized 10/25/40/50GbE NICs to Cavium’s broad Ethernet NIC portfolio enables Cavium to meet and exceed the requirements of the most demanding enterprise, telco and cloud applications and deliver scalability to drive business growth,” said Rajneesh Gaur, Vice President and General Manager of Ethernet Adapter Group, Cavium. “FastLinQ 41000 Series provides a highly differentiated solution by delivering flexibility in choice of RDMA and seamless interoperability with a broad ecosystem of Ethernet switching and server solutions using SmartAN™ technology.”
Purpose-built for accelerating and simplifying data center networking, Cavium FastLinQ 41000 Series Ethernet technology delivers:

• Enterprise Class Reliability, Flexibility and Security – With millions of Ethernet ports shipped, and a flexible architecture that delivers faster time to market and future proofing for new and emerging technologies, FastLinQ Ethernet NICs are amongst the top choices for enterprise data centers. Cavium SmartAN technology enables adaptive link controls for seamless zero-touch interoperability with industry wide 25/100GbE switches and cables. Extensive and robust support of a broad variety of enterprise and cloud operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, VMware ESXi, FreeBSD and Solaris for seamless integration for diverse application platforms across x86, ARM, SPARC and Power8 architectures. Support for UEFI Secure Boot safeguards the FastLinQ NIC and ensures no rogue drivers are being executed on start-up, preventing the injection of malware.
• Cloud Ready – Industry’s only network adapter that delivers the ultimate choice and investment protection with concurrent support for RoCE, RoCEv2 and iWARP. Acceleration for Network Virtualization by offloading protocol processing for VxLAN, NVGRE, GRE and GENEVE enables customers to build and scale virtualized networks without impacting network performance. Authenticated updates for NICs validate that signed firmware is correct and trusted to eliminate rogue firmware installation, reducing attack surfaces.
• Storage Acceleration – Concurrent full offload for NVMe-oF™, NVMe-Direct, SMB Direct, iSER, iSCSI and FCoE delivers up to 3M IOPS while consuming fewer server CPU cycles, leaving headroom for virtual applications and higher ROI on server investments with seamless upgrade paths of next gen storage connectivity.
• Telco and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) – Leading small packet performance, with line rate packet per second for 10/25Gbps Ethernet, MPLSoUDP offload, and integration with DPDK and OpenStack with Mirantis FUEL Plug-in, enables Telco’s and NFV application vendors to seamlessly deploy, manage and accelerate the most demanding NFV workloads.

FastLinQ 41000 Series Product Features:

• 10/25/40/50Gbps Ethernet connectivity across standard and OCP form factors
• PCIe Gen 3 x8 with backward compatibility
• Passive heat sink design
• Universal RDMA – Concurrent RoCE, RoCEv2 and iWARP
• Stateless offloads for VxLAN, NVGRE, GENEVE
• SmartAN for seamless 10/25GbE interoperability
• Full Storage protocol offloads for iSCSI, FCoE, iSER, NVMe-oF, SMB Direct
• Secure Firmware Update and UEFI secure boot
• Comprehensive Management across heterogeneous platforms with QConvergeConsole GUI and CLI

Industry’s Most Comprehensive Network Adapter portfolio – Cavium offers the broadest set of Ethernet networking adapters – FastLinQ Standard Ethernet Adapters, Converged Networking Adapters and LiquidIO™ Intelligent NICs that cover the entire spectrum of customer Ethernet connectivity and offload requirements. Cavium Ethernet adapters are trusted by customers worldwide.
Cavium FastLinQ 41000 Series are available now. For more information, visit www.qlogic.com and www.cavium.com.
To learn more about how Cavium FastLinQ Universal RDMA Technology can deliver the ultimate in flexibility and choice – register for a joint Cavium – The Linley Group Webinar
Partner Supporting Quotes
“Arista Networks, as a fellow founder of the 25G Ethernet consortium, recognizes the need for a strong ecosystem. We have partnered with Cavium to ensure availability of tested and interoperable solutions for hyperscale data centers,” said Martin Hull, Senior Director Product Management for Arista Networks. “Cavium FastLinQ 41000 Series of 10/25G NICs and Arista’s portfolio of 25G leaf and spine systems deliver backward compatibility and investment protection with standards compliance.”

“Software Defined Networking and Storage Spaces Direct are the foundation of Windows Server Software Defined (WSSD) solution offerings – a key tenet of Microsoft’s hybrid cloud strategy that enables highly flexible, economical, and cloud-scale data centers,” said Ravi Rao, Group Manager, Windows Networking, Microsoft Corp. “We are pleased to see Cavium FastLinQ 41000 Series of 10/25GbE NICs, with support for RoCE, RoCEv2, and iWARP, achieve SDDC Premium certification that proves their ability to power software defined data centers built using Windows Server 2016.”

“Most clouds and data centers today run on Ubuntu, the leading Cloud OS. Canonical is pleased to partner with Cavium FastLinQ to announce NVMe-oF support on Ubuntu 17.04 to supply the industry’s high performing and low-latency storage networks needed for today’s data centric applications,” said Anand Krishnan, EVP of Cloud, Canonical.

“Today’s enterprise and telecommunications infrastructures rely on open source innovations like OpenStack and Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK). These same infrastructures also require a new level of connectivity, such as that enabled by the Cavium FastLinQ™ 41000 Series,” said Gunnar Hellekson, senior director, Product Management, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization, Red Hat. “Red Hat is proud to help lead this open source innovation, and we are pleased to work with Cavium and other contributors on technologies such as RDMA and DPDK to help power the open, connected infrastructure of the future.”

“As software defined infrastructures evolve and newer kinds of workloads are deployed on SDDC, requirements for network virtualization offloads, higher bandwidth, lower costs and simplified management are increasing,” said Sudhanshu (Suds) Jain, Product Manager, VMware. “Sharing the vision of simplified infrastructure operations and increased application performance, VMware is pleased to collaborate with Cavium to bring technology advancements like FastLinQ 10/25GbE NICs with VxLAN and GENEVE offloads to the market.”
Analyst Supporting Quotes
The Cavium FastLinQ 41000 Series should have broad market appeal given its support for the many protocols and features required by today’s diverse and dynamic marketplace,” said Seamus Crehan, President of Crehan Research. “Designed to address the rapidly changing needs of the data center and the specific needs of mega data centers run by telecommunications providers, MSPs and enterprise private clouds.”

“Cavium FastLinQ 41000 Series of network adapters address the demanding needs of the next-generation agile data center by providing a flexible and future-proof solution,” said Shane Rau, Research Vice President, Computing Semiconductors of IDC. “With a compelling set of offloads for both server and storage applications, along with a flexible architecture, these second-generation 25GbE NICs from Cavium are well poised to ride the wave of networking interconnects.”

“The data center market is well into a ramp for deployment of 25/50GbE, with significant deployments in large cloud service providers (CSPs) looking to migrate from 10GbE server connectivity to 25GbE server connectivity with 100GbE switching. Mainstream enterprises are expected to follow later in 2017,” said Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Research Director and Advisor, Data Center Research Practice, IHS Markit.  “In a recent IHS Markit report, we discovered that 25GE ports are expected to represent 31% of adapter ports shipped by 2021. The introduction of 25GbE adapters targeting cloud, telco NFV, and enterprise specific use cases are an important and timely event advancing the networking market, driving new opportunity.” [2]

“Data centers are in the midst of a rapid migration to distributed applications, a massive expansion in the size of the clustered server environments–which together are driving a huge increase in IP traffic inside the data center,” said Frank Berry, Founder and Senior Analyst at IT Brand Pulse. “Servers in these data centers need both high bandwidth and low latency network connectivity. Cavium 41000 Series adapters more than meet the challenge by providing up to 100Gb throughput and multiple ultra-low latency technologies including RoCE, iWARP and DPDK kernel bypass.”

“The FastLinQ QL41000 Series represents the Swiss army knife of 25G Ethernet adapters,” said Bob Wheeler, Principal Analyst at The Linley Group. “These NICs are unique in supporting both RoCE and iWARP while also providing a broad set of storage and virtualization offloads.”

“Traditional network infrastructures are rigid and complex, making it both time-consuming and error prone to deploy workloads that require network changes,” said Paul Teich, Principal Analyst at TIRIAS Research. “Organizations can achieve rapid scale and agility when they adopt software-defined network (SDN) and software-defined storage (SDS) models for deployment and management. Look beyond server virtualization to achieve higher efficiency while also solving operational and security challenges.”