10 Gigabit Ethernet XMC modules for network control and data storage introduced by Acromag
WIXOM, Mich., 27 Jan. 2014. Acromag in Wixom, Mich., is introducing the XMC-6260 and XMC-6280 Express Mezzanine Card (XMC) modules for data-intensive, real-time embedded computing systems that require 10-gigabit Ethernet interfaces.
Target applications include high-speed data storage, image collection and transfer, distributed control networks, and board-to-board interfaces.
The XMCs use a TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) ASIC connected to a PCI Express Gen2 x8 interface. The XMC-6260 has dual XAUI 10GBASE-KX4 ports and supports conduction-cooling to operate in temperatures from -40 to 85 degrees Celsius.
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The XMC-6280 features four SFP+ ports for fiber or copper cables. All versions are available with lead or lead-free solder.
These network interface cards (NIC) employ the Chelsio T4 processor. This ASIC has four 10-Gigabit Ethernet XGMAC interfaces and supports as many as 1 million connections.
Five gigabits of DDR3 memory enhances the number of virtual connections. The T4 chip provides full offload support for TCP, UDP, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
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Other functions include high-performance packet switching, traffic filtering and management. By relieving the host CPU of these network processing tasks, very low Ethernet latency and high-level determinism are reliably achievable. Software drivers are available for Linux and Windows.
An eight-lane PCI Express host interface provides a high-speed connection to the system processor. With support for 5-gigabit-per-second data rates, the PCI Express interface delivers speeds to 32 gigabits per second of bandwidth to the server.
This connection enables stateless offloads, packet filtering (firewall offload), and traffic shaping (media streaming). Acromag's XMC-6260 and XMC-6280 modules provide a TCP offload solution. The TOE ASIC has hundreds of programmable registers for protocol configuration and offload control.
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These modules can offload TCP processing per connection, per server, per interface. They also can globally and simultaneously tunnel traffic from non-offloaded connections to the host processor for the native TCP/IP stack to process. Additionally, the modules provides a flexible zero-copy capability for regular TCP connections, requiring no changes to the sender, to deliver line rate performance with minimal CPU usage.
These network interface cards also can provide packet switching and routing capabilities. The cards integrate a high-performance packet switch, which allows switching of traffic from any of the input ports to any of the output ports (wire-to-wire), and from any of the output ports to any of the input ports (host-to-host).
For more information contact Acromag online at www.acromag.com.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
