Record-setting 33 Mpps DPDK Packet Rate Achieved with ConnectX-4 Lx 25Gb/s Ethernet NIC

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ: MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, today announced an extended partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Mellanox is working simultaneously at its own NFV benchmarking facility as well as with HPE and their NFV Infrastructure lab to optimize the Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx series of Ethernet adapters on HPE servers. In the Mellanox NFV benchmarking facility the ConnectX-4 Lx Ethernet adapter with Mellanox DPDK Poll Mode Driver (PMD) has demonstrated near line rate packet processing performance of 33 million packets per second per 25Gb/s port, with zero packet loss, running in HPE’s ProLiant series of server platforms.

The quest for higher I/O bandwidth and network performance continues to mount as businesses and organizations accelerate their digital transformation and rapidly deploy new virtual services and solutions. This is especially true for Communication Service Providers (CSPs) who are moving NFV from concept to deployment. CSP’s must make sure their underlying network infrastructure has enough data packet processing throughput to maintain the Quality of Service their Subscribers expect today. These factors have made 25G Ethernet with high packet handling performance and low processing overhead an attractive option.

Mellanox along with other promoters and hyperscale data center leaders came together to form the 25G Ethernet Consortium (http://25gethernet.org/) to define the specification for interoperable 25/50G products. More than 40 consortium member companies have developed products based on the de facto industry standard, and today 25G is poised to experience the most rapid adoption of any previous Ethernet networking speed. Mellanox is the first to market with a 25/50/100Gb/s end-to-end Ethernet family of products including: Spectrum switches, ConnectX-4/4Lx adapters, and LinkX cables. ConnectX-4 Lx 25G Ethernet NICs have been proven to deliver near line rate packet processing performance of 33 million packets per second at zero packet loss, making it an ideal choice for NFV and cloud deployment.

In addition, Mellanox is an active contributor to the Open Compute Project (OCP), bringing 10/25G and 40/50/100G end-to-end interconnect Ethernet designs to the OCP community. These advanced adapter, switch, and interconnect Ethernet products are ideal for CSPs to free their networks to unlock performance, unleash innovation, and enable open platforms that deliver the highest performance, reliability and efficiency and avoid vendor lock in.

“Mellanox is a company that is built on relentless pursuit of network performance and infrastructure efficiency through innovation in silicon design, software development, and active engagement in standard bodies and industry associations. Our end-to-end 25Gb/s Ethernet interconnect portfolio, and a full suite of virtual switching acceleration and offloading capabilities, eliminate the performance bottlenecks normally associated with deploying NFV solutions,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Moreover, these groundbreaking performance numbers are achieved through full virtual switch offload on the adapter, resulting in minimal impact on valuable CPU and memory resources, empowering NFV platforms to do what they are supposed to do – perform service and application processing, rather than handling packet I/O.”

“As CSPs deploy NFV in production, they need to ensure their NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) is reliable and can continue to deliver the quality of service their subscribers demand. One aspect of this is making sure their NFVI has the data packet processing performance required to support the service traffic.” said Claus Pedersen, Director of NFV and Telecommunication Segment, HPE Servers. “The HPE Telco NFV Infrastructure lab has worked closely with Mellanox to ensure that Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx 25Gb/s running on HPE ProLiant servers will enable our CSP customers to achieve the scale, reliability and efficiency they require of their NFV deployments.”

Source : Mellanox
with Business Wire