14 DAY TRIAL // Intel may plan sometime later this year to use its network chips as a way to exploit the major new features in data centers: multi processor based systems, processors with a multi core architecture and increased virtualization. During a Cisco Systems Inc.'s Networkers user conference, the processor making company announced a pair of chips designed for server network cards or for integration in motherboards. The two new network chips named Intel 82598 10-Gigabit Ethernet Controller and 82575EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller are using the latest network technologies available.
As processing power and data flow dramatically increased in data centers, the old network subsystems were becoming a real bottleneck, said Sunil Ahluwalia, a product line manager at Intel's LAN access division, cited by the Web based hardware news site ComputerWorld. According to him, the chips announced are including "multiple queues, virtualization capability, packet prioritization and new storage networking features to break that bottleneck." Using 32 transmitting and 64 receiving queues per port the chip can move more packets in and out of the server's core, thus balancing the workload and making better used of the server power, he added.
At the same time with these chips, Intel introduced a new technology to allocate network data packets to different virtual machines on a server, the Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMD for short) will work with software provided by Vwware, XenSource and Microsoft, even if it is less than probable that the software vendors will be able to release compatibility patches until September, said Steve Schultz, an Intel product marketing manager, cited by ComputerWorld.
Another new feature of the Intel network chips is that they can work directly with Internet SCSI storage networks and the 10 Gigabit chip has a few more features like the possibility of using mixed mediums through the emerging Fiber Channel Over Ethernet (FCOE for short) technology, even if a FCOE is still being under construction. With the new chips, Intel upgraded its networking server platform from the old PCI-X interface to the faster PCI Express bus, enabling the 10 Gigabit processor to reach a full 10Gbit/sec data flow with only 10 percent of CPU cycles taken.