Mellanox ConnectX series Adapters

Network adapters Mellanox 10/25/40/50/56/100 Gigabit Ethernet differ in high capacity and support of various set of protocols. Solutions are focused on application in highly productive servers and storage systems, including data processing centers, private and public clouds, applications Web 2.0 and solutions for processing Big Data with a high load and also high-performance computing and data storage.

2020: ConnectX-6 Lx SmartNIC with optimization for 25G-networks

On May 22, 2020 the NVIDIA company provided NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-6 Lx SmartNIC — 25/50 GB / about the smart network Ethernet-adapter (SmartNIC) of high security and efficiency for the growing loadings of the corporate and cloud systems.

ConnectX-6 Lx, product of the 11th generation in the ConnectX family, meets requirements of modern DPCs where 25-gigabit connections become the standard for work on exacting tasks, for example, corporate applications, problems of artificial intelligence or data analysis in real time.

The SmartNIC network interface card allows to realize the complete potential of performance of applications using the engines programmatically defined, hardware accelerated, removing from CPU of a task of security and network processing.

Modern cloud and corporate DPCs need acceleration of data transmission on network successfully to be scaled and cope with computing loadings, - ConnectX-6 Lx SmartNIC provides the economic, accelerated and safe data transmission for a new era of disaggregated and scalable DPCs, - Amit Krig, the senior vice president for software and network products in division of NVIDIA Mellanox speaks

The increased security

Functions of the increased security, such as protocols of enciphering IPsec and Hardware Root of Trust, together with a tenfold gain of speed of the mechanism of connection supervision (Connection Tracking) allow to implement model of security Zero Trust in all data processing center. Support of RDMA over converged Ethernet (RoCE), the advanced virtualization and support of containers and also hardware unloading of the NVMe over Fabrics protocol provide scalable and effective communication.

The server industry promptly passes from standard 10GbE to 25GbE, at the same time rapid growth is expected further. With increase in requirements to network it is necessary to transfer more and more tasks to SmartNIC, – the Network adapter NVIDIA Mellanox ConnectX-6 Lx provides transfer of load of SmartNIC, including the advanced switching and security, in economic 25/50GbE the solution, - Scott Raynovich, the founder and the technical director of technology research company Futuriom speaks

Key features of Mellanox ConnectX-6 Lx:

• Two ports 25gb/s Ethernet or one 50gb/with Ethernet, connection on PCIe Gen 3.0/4.0 x8 * Safety features, including Hardware Root of Trust, Connection Tracking for L4 of firewalls with status monitoring of connections and acceleration of protocols of enciphering of IPSec
• Acceleration of GPUDirect RDMA for the NVMe over Fabrics protocol (NVMe-oF), the scalable accelerated calculations and high-speed transmission of video data * Support of Zero Touch RoCE (ZTR) for simple and fast installation of RoCE-networks without the need for in addition setup of the switch
• The accelerated commutation and processing of packets (ASAP2) with the built-in functions of hardware unloading of virtualization and containerization (SR-IOV and VirtIO) for acceleration programmatically the defined networks and ITU of the next generation.

The first samples ConnectX-6 Lx are already available, and mass deliveries are expected in the third quarter 2020. As well as all products of the line of ConnectX, this model it is compatible to a program stack of Mellanox SmartNIC. In combination with the Mellanox Spectrum switches and cables and LinkX transceivers ConnectX SmartNIC adapters allow to create the best full solutions for high-performance networks.

2017

ConnectX-3 Pro

The solutions ConnectX-3 Pro are the programmable two-port adapters allowing users to program the built-in PLIS for work with ConnectX-3 Pro and to achieve performance improvement and the speed of work of networks.

Programmable ConnectX-3 Pro Ethernet-adapters with hardware unloading support interfaces on 10/40 Gbps. Access to the internal memory and PLIS is performed via the PCI Express Gen 3 interface or the network interface that does the device to even more flexible.

Features of solutions:

• ensuring high performance in the virtualized overlay networks (VXLAN and NVGRE);
• input-output consolidation;
• virtualization acceleration;
• scaling option to tens of thousands of nodes.

ConnectX-3 Pro EN

The solutions ConnectX-3 Pro EN represent one - and two-port adapters 10/40/56 GbE with the PCI Express 3.0 interface. Are equipped with technology of hardware unloading for overlay networks (tunnels) and are flexible switching solutions for the PCI Express Gen3 servers used in private and public cloud infrastructures, corporate data processing centers and supercomputers.

Features of solutions:

• interfaces on 10/40/56 Gbps for connection to servers and storage systems;
• ensuring high performance of clusters, networks and storage systems;
• the guaranteed capacity and low indicator of a delay;
• input-output consolidation;
• virtualization acceleration;
• energy efficiency;
• scaling option to tens of thousands of nodes;
• hardware unloading of the encapsulated traffic of NVGRE and VXLAN;
• exact synchronization of hours;
• end-to-end management of QoS and control of overloads
• hardware virtualization of input-output
• RoHS-R6

ConnectX-3 Pro EN 10GBASE-T

The solutions ConnectX-3 Pro EN 10GBASE-T represent two-port adaptor payments with the PCI Express 3.0 interface and technology of hardware unloading for overlay networks (tunnels), high-performance and flexible switching solutions 10 GbE for the PCI Express Gen3 servers used in private and public cloud infrastructures, corporate data processing centers and supercomputers.

According to Mellanox, use of ConnectX-3 Pro EN adapters in public and private cloud cluster databases, the systems of parallel computings, transaction services and the high-performance built-in input-output systems provides a gain in performance due to reduction of duration and reduction in cost of transactions.