Overview
Intel continues its legacy of Ethernet leadership by introducing the latest 10 gigabit family of adapters powered by, the Intel® Ethernet X710 Controller, codenamed Fortville.
The X710 adapter family addresses the demanding needs of the next-generation agile data center by providing unmatched features for both server and network virtualization, flexibility for
LAN and SAN networks, and proven, reliable performance.
Leading 10GbE Performance
The X710 adapter family delivers superior performance with a theoretical throughput of 80 Gb/s (40Gb/s Tx; 40Gb/s Rx) bi-directional throughput (quad-port adapter required), in a PCI Express v3.0 x8 slot.Optimized performance vectors (and key uses) include:
- Small Packet Performance: Achieves wire-rate throughput on smaller payload sizes (>128 Bytes at 40 GbE and >64 Bytes at 10 GbE
- Bulk Transfer Performance: Delivers line-rate performance with low CPU usage for large application buffers
- Virtualized Performance: Alleviates hypervisor I/O bottlenecks by providing flow separation for Virtual Machines (VMs)
- Network Virtualization: Network virtualization overlay offloads including Geneve, VXLAN and NVGRE
- Storage Performance: Intelligent Offloads accelerate operating systems storage initiators to deliver high performance for NAS (NFS, SMB), and SAN (iSCSI, and FCoE)
A Complete, Unified Networking Solution
Converging data and storage onto one fabric eliminates the need for multiple adapters, cables and switches. Furthermore 10 gigabit Ethernet provides the bandwidth to converge these multiple fabrics onto a single wire. A key capability that makes all this possible is traffic class separation provided by Data Center Bridging (DCB)1—providing a one-wire solution with virtual pipes for the different classes of traffic:
- Data: Best effort delivery of standard LAN traffic
- Storage: Lossless network for FCoE and iSCSI
- Management: Guaranteed connectivity of data center IP management
One Adapter, One Price
With the Intel’s adapters, iSCSI and FCoE support are included in the price of an adapter. There is no need to purchase multiple adapters or additional licensing for an X710 adapter. It’s simple and easy. Everything you need to unify your networking is included in a single SKU. One Adapter, One Price.
Power Savings
Power efficiency is critical to IT specialists as energy consumption is a real OpEx concern.
- Lowest Power Consumption: The new generation of X710 adapters are power misers. They deliver double the throughput with only half the power of the previous X520 generation.
- Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE): Reduces power consumption during periods of low data activity. Energy is used to maintain the physical layer transmitters in a “ready state”to transmit data on the wire. During periods of low data traffic, EEE sends a low-power-idle signal to put the transmitters into a “low power state” saving power and cost. When data needs to be sent, EEE sends a normal idle signal to wake up the transmit system before data is due to be sent so there is no degradation of performance.
Server Virtualization
With Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT), the X710 family of adapters deliver outstanding I/O performance in virtualized server environments. They reduce I/O bottlenecks by providing intelligent offloads for networking traffic per virtual machine (VM), enabling near-native performance and VM scalability. The host-based virtualization technologies supported by Intel® VT include:
- VMDq for Emulated Path: Adapter-based VM Queue sorting enabling efficient hypervisor-based switching
- SR-IOV for Direct Assignment: Adapter-based isolation and switching for various virtual station instances enabling optimal CPU usage in virtualized environments.
Additionally, X710 adapters provide Virtual Bridging1 support that delivers both host-side and switch-side control and management of virtualized I/O as well as the following modes of virtualized operation:
- VEPA1: IEEE 802.1Qbg support for Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator1
- VEB: Virtual Ethernet Bridge support via Intel® VT
Network Virtualization
Network virtualization is the next big trend in creating an agile data center. The family of X710 adapters are ready to help you take that next step.
- VXLAN, NVGRE, GENEVE Offloads: These stateless offloads preserve application performance for overlay networks. With these offloads it is possible to distribute network traffic across CPU cores. At the same time X710 offloads LSO, GSO, and checksum from the host software reducing CPU overhead.
Intel® Ethernet Flow Director
Flow Director is an advanced traffic steering capability built into the X710 controller. It consists of a large number of flow affinity filters that direct receive packets by their flows to queues for classification, load balancing, and matching between flows and CPU cores.It eliminates context switching required within the CPU. As a result, Flow Directorsignificantly increasingthe number of transactions per second and reduces latency for cloud applications like Memcached.
Intelligent Offloads
The Xeon® family of processors has demonstrated increased computing perfor¬mance and increased integration of key server subsystems generation after gen¬eration. To offload is to leverage the ever-escalating computing power of the Xeon processor where appropriate and implementing complementary accelerations in the network controller—this is what Intel refers to as “intelligent offloads.” By employing a balanced hybrid of compute and offload, intelligent offloads are able to achieve the optimized point of performance and efficiency. This is most notably observed in the following usage models:
- TCP Stateless Offloads: Demonstrates leading performance vs. TOE solutions without restricting feature usage (TOE usage usually requires that key features be disabled). Supported stateless off- loads include Checksum, TSO, VMDq, and RSS.
- Host iSCSI/FCoE Initiators: Providing exceptional performance without the need for full-offload HBA2methods.
- Flow Classification: Trafficking data flows across multiple consumers and connections
Manageability
The X710 family of adapters incorporate the manageability required by IT personnel for remote control and alerting. Communication to the Board Management Controller (BMC) is available either through an on-board SMBus port or through the DMTF-defined NCSI, providing a variety of management protocols, including IPMI, BMC Pass-thru, OS2BMC, and MCTP/SMBus and MCTP/PCIe.
Specifications
