Intel Opens Up Key Server Acceleration Technology to Industry

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, Taipei, Oct. 17, 2006 – Intel Corporation announced today that it will encourage networking companies to benefit from a key server data input and output acceleration technology designed and added to its server product lines earlier this year.

A component of Intel I/OAT (Input/Output Acceleration Technology), Intel QuickData technology is a data acceleration engine that enables other networking and server vendors to increase the throughput of server data traffic. Key supporters of Intel QuickData Technology include Broadcom, Fujitsu-Siemens, IBM, Mellanox, Microsoft and VMware.

Introduced as part of I/OAT with the Intel Xeon 5100 series processor-based platforms earlier this year, the DMA (Direct Memory Access) engine in Intel’s server and workstation platform chipsets are the foundation of Intel QuickData Technology. I/OAT is already supported by a broad range of server vendors including IBM, Hitachi, NEC, Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo, Samsung, Supermicro and Tyan. Intel QuickData Technology will extend that support to a broad range of device manufacturers moving forward.

“By enabling products from other vendors to use the data acceleration engine present in the Intel Xeon® 5100 and 5300 series-based platform, Intel QuickData Technology will help the industry benefit from the increased speed, scalability and server reliability that only Intel enterprise platforms can provide,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Server Products Group. “This echoes Intel’s long-held belief in the proliferation of key technologies designed to grow the industry’s computing and networking capabilities.”

Intel has been working closely with Microsoft, the Linux community, VMware and several server vendors to optimize Intel QuickData technology for the broadest range of operating system and software environments.

“Microsoft is very pleased by Intel’s decision to broaden the availability of I/O acceleration, helping to further our mutual efforts to drive industry adoption of this important scalable networking technology,” said Henry Sanders, general manager of Microsoft’s Windows Core Networking Group. “The additional third-party network vendor support will greatly benefit our Windows Server 2003 customers as they seek to cost-effectively scale network applications and optimize performance using the Scalable Networking Pack with Intel QuickData Technology.”

“We are looking forward to the deployment of Intel's built-in QuickData technology, we are assessing its benefits in our servers and with Intel's PRO/1000PT networking adapters,” said Jeff Benck, vice president, IBM BladeCenter and Modular System Development. “Now that Intel is allowing third-party products to access the data movement acceleration engine, Intel's QuickData Technology capability can be included across a broader range of our product line.”

Intel QuickData Technology also offers an acceleration solution that will benefit virtualized environments.

“Intel QuickData Technology provides a hardware assist for memory copies and we expect to use this functionality to speed up our I/O emulation code,” stated Beng-Hong Lim, senior director, VMWare research and development. “We are pleased with Intel's decision to broaden the availability of I/O acceleration by providing QuickData Technology to third-party network adapter vendors.”

According to Franz-Josef Bathe, senior director of product management, Fujitsu-Siemens Enterprise Server Products, “Fujitsu-Siemens is a leading vendor of virtualized Solution, and we have been interested in Intel I/OAT to improve networking throughput to virtual machines. Intel’s enabling of QuickData technology is a step toward making Fujitsu-Siemens Computers Intel Xeon-based PRIMERGYs the best platforms for I/O virtualization.”

“Intel QuickData Technology is a platform solution that addresses the computing overhead and system level bottlenecks associated with TCP/IP based communication as opposed to TCP Offload Engines which only address part of the problem,” said Michael Kagan, vice president of architecture, Mellanox Technologies. “Mellanox is embracing Intel QuickData Technology and will implement support for the technology in our adapters that will seamlessly fit into the total platform solution to accelerate TCP/IP communication.”

Broadcom, a leading networking vendor, has also evaluated the technology. “We believe Intel’s introduction of QuickData Technology is a very positive step.” Said Greg Young, vice president and general manager of Broadcom's High-Speed Controller Line of Business: “We are working with Intel to evaluate the possible ways that our customers can benefit from this new direction and we will be looking at our product offerings to assess where there may be synergistic coexistence.”