Emulex Introduces I/O Connectivity Solutions for HPC

Emulex Corporation announced a family of OneConnect Network Xceleration solutions for the High Performance Networking (HPN) market, its next generation LightPulse (LP)e16000R 16Gb FC HBAs based on the new Emulex Engine (XE)201R converged fabric controller, and its next generation OneConnect (OC)e11000R Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) based on the new XE4310R Ethernet controller, delivering I/O connectivity solutions to address the needs of the changing data center.

Emulex is bringing its new family of OneConnect (OC)e12000 10GbE Network Xceleration solutions to market in partnership with Myricom, Inc., in delivering high performance, latency optimized Ethernet solutions for vertical market applications. This multi-generational marketing and development partnership leverages Myricom’s deep expertise in HPN, specifically low latency, high packet-rate, vertical application optimizations, and Emulex’s enterprise reach, high volume, enterprise-hardened hardware roadmap, and global go-to-market channels.

"By partnering with Myricom, Emulex is offering I/O connectivity solutions that broaden our reach in the Ethernet market and fast growing HPN vertical segments, such as High Frequency Trading (HFT), network security, and cloud-enabled video distribution," said Shaun Walsh, SVP of marketing, Emulex. "Ethernet-based HPC is a rapidly growing market segment with a 63% CAGR through 20161, and together, our partnership will provide our customers with a roadmap of solutions that leverage Emulex’s market-proven I/O connectivity and Myricom’s unique software IP."

Emulex OneConnect Network Xceleration solutions provide performance for specific enterprise applications that rely on low latency, superior message rate or packet pacing through FastStack application acceleration software powered by Myricom.

Using FastStack acceleration, customers get the benefit of performance networking for their applications, within 10GbE. Going forward, the two companies will be jointly developing additional FastStack software solutions which will optimize Emulex’s I/O connectivity solutions across additional vertical markets.

"Partnering with Emulex allows Myricom to bring its unique high performance networking software solutions for specific vertical market applications to a broader market," said Dr. Nan Boden, CEO, Myricom. "Emulex’s market strength and industry-leading Ethernet road map combined with Myricom’s ultra-low latency performance, lossless packet capture/injection and traffic shaping technology enables the two companies to provide best-of-breed HPC networking."

Emulex is offering three OneConnect Network Xceleration solutions targeted at specific vertical applications which leverage kernel bypass operations that reduce latency and transaction times in conjunction with the OCe12000 adapters, including FastStack DBL (financial trading), FastStack Sniffer10G (cyber/network security) and FastStack VideoPump (video streaming and digital content delivery).

FastStack DBL
The OCe12000 combined with FastStack DBL software delivers performance by accelerating UDP and TCP communication in HFT environments over industry-standard 10GbE network and IP protocols, and features:

Low Latency Performance: Delivers low latency, enabling faster transactional performance in HFT environments.
Broad Platform Support: Optimized for use on Linux and Windows operating system platforms which are broadly used in HFT environments.
Transparent Acceleration: Superior performance while accelerating existing Linux and Windows sockets applications without modifications.
Flexible Architecture: FastStack DBL can be combined with FastStack Sniffer10G to not only improve financial transaction performance, but also identify and address latencies which help optimize overall performance.

FastStack Sniffer10G
The OCe12000 combined with FastStack Sniffer10G software provides a solution for network traffic capture, injection and analysis for performance-sensitive and mission-critical market segments, such as network surveillance, monitoring and analysis, deep packet inspection (DPI), test and measurement, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) defense appliances.

FastStack Sniffer10G includes:

100% Lossless Packet Capture: It provides 100% lossless packet capture and packet injection for all Ethernet packet sizes on a 10GbE data stream. This line-rate performance enables more thorough inspection and better detection of threats for cyber security environments and further refinement of market models and trading software algorithms for HFT environments.
Improved Multi-Core Utilization: It can distribute incoming packets over multiple CPU cores to not only improve CPU utilization, but also improve application performance through partitioning, duplication, and process sharing.
Increased Bandwidth: Port aggregation allows network traffic from two or more ports from the same or different OCe12000 adapters.
Cloud Multi-Tenancy Security SLAs: Ithelps cloud providers implement and track security policies in public cloud infrastructures to meet the demands of security SLAs in multi-client environments.

FastStack VideoPump
The OCe12000 combined with FastStack VideoPump software, which will be available this summer, delivers more video streams per server and improves asset utilization for video streaming and IPTV, and features:

Predictable QoS: Designed for live streaming video, FastStack VideoPump traffic shaping technology provides predictable QoS with more effective data pacing and efficient bandwidth usage, improving the end-user experience.
Reduced CaPex: It supports more than 25,000 video streams per server, increasing server utilization and resulting in reduced costs and energy consumption.
Scalability: It addresses the continuous growth of digital media content with line-rate streaming of multiple network adapters per server and more than 25,000 Over-the-Top (OTT) high-definition video streams (typically 3Mb per stream), the most scalable in the industry.

"As performance and latency become increasingly important, we expect that Ethernet products which can offer these characteristics will enjoy strong network adoption," said Seamus Crehan, founder and president, Crehan Research. "This partnership, which combines Emulex’s current 10GbE port shipment leadership position with Myricom’s HPC expertise, is well positioned to address this fast-growing market."

"Organizations looking for low latency solutions should consider the advantages of consolidating onto a common Ethernet platform because as data centers grow in size and complexity, achieving simplicity while driving down costs and overhead will become very important," said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "Emulex, in partnership with Myricom, is offering a compelling low latency Ethernet solution with excellent price-to-performance capabilities and the ability to deliver predictable, repeatable low latencies, while leveraging a common infrastructure to do it."

"The HPC market will be expanded by servers running data-intensive workloads, with spending for HPC servers expected to exceed $14 billion in 2016," said Steve Conway, VP, HPC research, IDC. "With data-intensive workloads comes the need for the I/O to support them, and the new HPN solutions from Emulex aim to address this growing need for business and industry, government, and academia, and across vertical markets including financial services and digital content creation, among others."

The OCe12000 Network Xceleration and FastStack DBL or FastStack Sniffer10G software and hardware bundles are available and range from $690 to $1,090 MSRP.

LPe16000R 16GFC HBA
Next generation LPe16000R 16GFC HBA is based on the new XE201R, a quad-port converged fabric controller that provides connectivity combinations of FC and Ethernet connectivity on a single ASIC with up to four ports of 8Gb FC, FCoE, and 10GbE, two ports of 16GFC or one port of 40GbE.

Benefits of this new technology include:

Improved Signal Integrity and Reliability: The XE201R features new voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) technology for improved signal integrity and reliability.
Broad Configurability: Designed for new PCIe 3.0 systems,it can be incorporated into industry-standard custom format mezzanine cards, special-purpose storage target controllers or daughter cards, providing OEMs with design flexibility.
vScale Virtualization Performance: It uses Emulex vScale, featuring an eight-core architecture, with FC and FCoE hardware offload. vScale enables optimum server efficiency and higher virtualization ratios with superior QoS.
vPath Virtual I/O Support: Emerging I/O virtualization standards, including Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator (VEPA) and Virtual Ethernet Bridge (VEB), are supported by an internal Ethernet switch, which allows data to be forwarded between collocated VMs while ensuring I/O traffic isolation.

OCe11000R UCNA
Next generation OCe11000R is based on the new XE4310R, an integrated, low-power, performance 10GbE controller for accelerating network and storage application performance on servers and storage systems and for enterprise applications requiring 10Gb/s wire-speed performance, and advanced I/O virtualization.

Benefits of this new technology include:

Signal Integrity and Reliability: The XE4310R also features new VCO technology for improved signal integrity and reliability.
Configurable Architecture: It features an innovative purpose-built hardware architecture to carry network and storage traffic over two full-duplex 10GbE ports or four 1GbE ports, or a mix of two 10GbE and two 1GbE ports.
Multi-Protocol Offload Support: It includes protocol offload support for TCP/IP, FCoE and iSCSI, minimizing CPU utilization and maximizing multi-core applications processing.