Features - Storage Innovations:

ASTUTE, CAVIUM TO DELIVER iSCSI, TCP-OFFLOAD ADAPTERS

Astute Networks, an industry-leading designer of intelligent silicon-based protocol acceleration solutions, in a collaborative effort with Cavium Networks, the cost and performance leader in security processing, introduced the SA1000 and PA1000 family of Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) SuperHBA protocol accelerators. Delivering TCP, iSCSI, IPSec and SSL offload processing, the SuperHBAs are offered in a variety of multi-port configurations. The SuperHBAs are products intended for board and system OEMs delivering products into mid-range and high-end servers, and Storage Array Front End applications.

"Cost effective implementation of TCP offload and security acceleration is essential for widespread adoption of IP storage and secure server applications," said Linley Gwennap, founder and principal analyst of The Linley Group. "Astute's high performance protocol processing combined with Cavium's best-of-breed inline security delivers a compelling value-proposition for multi-gigabit iSCSI and TCP offload systems."

The SA1000 SuperHBA accelerators bring together Astute Networks' Pericles Intelligent Protocol Processor (IPP) and Cavium Networks' NITROX II In-line Security Processor in a PCI-X add-in card solution. This SuperHBA accelerates all aspects of security processing and cycle intensive TCP and iSCSI stateful processing.

The PA1000 SuperHBA accelerators enable OEM system designers to quickly integrate high performance iSCSI and TCP offload capabilities into their systems at the lowest port cost available for non-encrypted traffic.

"The combined hardware acceleration of the Pericles IPP and the NITROX II Security Processor eliminates a vast amount of host processor compute cycles, thereby eliminating a traffic bottleneck," said Jon Siann, vice president of marketing at Astute Networks. "And, with these SuperHBAs, an OEM can implement multi-port GbE solutions at a higher density and a reduced cost over alternatives that provide only single port solutions."

"Cavium's NITROX II security processor is already the leading choice for in-line IPsec VPN and SSL e-commerce applications at top-tier OEM customers" said Rajiv Khemani, vice president of marketing at Cavium. "Now, with its versatile interface, performance and security capabilities and coupled with Astute's high performance Pericles IPP, the NITROX II offers a compelling high- performance and scalable solution for server and storage security applications."