Special Section: SNW, Fall 2004 - More News From SNW:

Hifn's FlowThrough Security Processors Released To Production

At Storage Networking World 2004, Hifn announced that the HIPP III 4300, 4350, 8300 and 8350 IPsec Security Processors have been released to production and are available in volume quantities. This family of Gb IPsec security processors is designed to meet the specific requirements of IP Storage applications, including iSCSI, FCIP and NAS, as well as the more generalized requirements for secure internetworking.

The HIPP III 4300/4350 and 8300/8350 are based on Hifn's unique FlowThrough security architecture. The FlowThrough architecture handles the entire IPsec protocol-the mandatory security protocol in the IETF iSCSI standard-in a single chip. Both the IPsec encryption data path functions and the IKE handshake are handled completely on-chip and in-line.

In Oct. 2003, Hifn won the Rising Star category for its HIPP III 4350 Storage Security Processor during the Best of Show awards at the 2003 Network Processors Conference. Entries were judged based on technology, innovation and industry impact.

"Hifn's HIPP III security processors are right-sized for storage applications," said Sanjay Iyer, senior analyst at the Linley Group. "These devices work with commodity memory components to deliver multi-Gb IPsec throughput for packets 300 bytes and larger, supporting a flow-through configuration for easy system design."

"Hifn's HIPP III product line is receiving tremendous OEM interest," said Bob Doud, Hifn's Product Line director for the HIPP III family. "With over a dozen design wins with Tier-1 customers in both the SAN & NAS storage market as well as the traditional Internet VPN space, we are very pleased with the uptake. Our first OEM's have released their products and end users are benefiting from the increased performance and interoperability that these devices offer."

The HIPP III 43x0 and 83x0 provide complete IPsec processing on a single chip. They support all the cryptographic algorithms and modes required and recommended in the IPsec standards, including: DES/3DES-CBC, AES-CBC, AES-CTR, MD5, SHA-1, and AES-XCBC-MAC. To enable the IKE protocol, these devices also support hardware accelerated RSA, DSA and Diffie-Hellman public key processing. The product family is backed with comprehensive software suites, including an on-chip IKE implementation and bundled Java-based configuration utility. Custom configuration methods can also be supported through a flexible management API.

IPsec processing is performed by the 4300 & 8300 at two Gb per second (1Gbps link, full-duplex). The 4350 & 8350 can sustain to four Gb per second packet processing, and one million packets per second with back-to-back SA variations. Both chips are manufactured using the .13 micron process and utilize 324 LBGA packaging.