Scientific
Applications:
BROADCOM TO DELIVER TCP/IP OFFLOAD
TECHNOLOGY
Broadcom Corporation, the leading provider of silicon solutions enabling
broadband communications, announced that the company is working extensively
with Microsoft Corporation to develop new networking technologies designed to
dramatically improve the performance of enterprise servers equipped with next-
generation high-speed Ethernet adapters. The focus of this collaboration has
been to redirect most of the tasks related to Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) processing to the network controller,
which in turn, will free up networking-related CPU overhead, resulting in a
boost to overall system performance and a reduction of system bottlenecks.
Additionally, TCP/IP Offload technology will play a key role in the
scalability of servers, enabling next-generation servers to meet the
performance criteria of today's Ethernet networks.
Innovations in data communications technology, fueled by bandwidth-
intensive
applications, have led to 10x improvements in networking hardware throughput
occurring about every four years. These performance improvements, which have
gone from 10 Megabits per second (Mbps) to 100 Mbps, and now to 1-Gigabit per
second (Gbps) with 10-Gigabit on the horizon, have far surpassed the CPU's
ability to keep pace. To compensate for this dilemma and free the CPU for
general computing requirements, the offloading of TCP/IP functionality to
dedicated hardware is a fundamental improvement.
"Windows TCP/IP Chimney Offload architecture has been developed to maximize
host CPU utilization for application workloads on multi-Gigabit networks,"
said Jawad Khaki, Corporate Vice President, Windows Networking &
Communications Group at Microsoft. "We are pleased to be working with Broadcom
as a key partner in the development of TCP/IP Offload Engine network interface
cards that advance the scalability of Windows platforms for multi-Gigabit
LANs."
"By working closely with industry leader Microsoft, we can assure our
customers that they will receive the best TCP/IP Offload Engine solution in
terms of performance, compatibility, robustness and interoperability," said
Thomas Lagatta, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Client/Server
Networking Business Unit. "The TCP Chimney approach to TCP/IP offload is
symbiotic with the TCP stack embedded in the operating system. The combination
of hardware offload for performance, and host stack for controlling the
connections, results in the best OS performance while maintaining the
flexibility and manageability of the Microsoft TCP stack. End users should
expect a significant boost to application performance due to reduced CPU
utilization while running the TCP Chimney on Broadcom's Ethernet network
controllers."
Other approaches to TCP/IP offload technology have not addressed the issue
of
seamless integration with the operating system's TCP/IP networking stack.
These solutions can only be deployed as standalone functions and are generally
limited to storage applications. The result is two or more independent and
different TCP/IP implementations running on a single server, making it more
complex for IT professionals to manage it. Microsoft's Chimney Offload
architecture will be the first development that segments the TCP/IP processing
tasks between TOE engines and the operating system networking stack. The
resulting benefit is that all network traffic can be accelerated through a
single Broadcom adapter optimized to interoperate with Microsoft's Chimney
architecture and managed in the same coherent fashion that IT professionals
are familiar with.
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