News

posted on 28 April 2008 09:04

Ethernet adapter and ASIC supplier Chelsio Communications has had its 10GbE driver code embedded in Citrix XenServer and its adapter hardware chosen by both HP and SGI.

Citrix' XenServer 4.1 contains new software drivers for Chelsio's third-generation 10GbE product based on its T3 ASIC with a PCIe interface. Chelsio says this delivers the lowest latency and highest bandwidth in the industry providing wire-speed 10 gigabit Ethernet capability.

Multiple XenServer virtual machines can share a single unified wire which can be used for:-

- Ethernet NIC (network interface card) functions,
- iSCSI target and initiator,
- TOE (TCP/IP offload engine) functions
- iWARP
- RDMA

HP will supply Chelsio's T3 10GbE adapter for its Integrity server line. SGI will also supply the Chelsio adaptors for its Altix blade and cluster servers and storage products.

Kianoosh Naghshineh, president and CEO of Chelsio, said this about the Citrix integration: “Virtualization support is a key attribute of our T3 unified wire technology, and we are pleased to be the only vendor in the industry that has delivered full 10G line-rate I/O performance for virtualized server environments using a single VM."

Concerning the HP deal he said: "Chelsio’s T3-based server adapters deliver the Unified Wire – enabling the convergence of TCP/IP, RDMA and iSCSI protocols onto a single Ethernet network with the high data integrity required for business critical applications. Getting selected by HP for the Integrity servers is a major OEM win for Chelsio and further validates the performance of the T3-based Unified Wire solutions."

Lorraine Bartlett, HP's Business Critical Systems' server marketing director, said: “Incorporating Chelsio’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter technologies into the HP Integrity server line helps ensure that customers can process their largest business IT tasks." 

Naghshineh said this about the SGI deal: "SGI customers have very demanding performance requirements for a wide range of throughput-intensive HPC applications. Chelsio is delivering the industry’s best 10Gb Ethernet iWARP adapters for the SGI Altix servers and clusters."

Bill Mannel, SGI's server marketing director, said: “As densities continue to increase and space and cooling limitations become more critical factors in data centers, the addition of Chelsio 10GbE adapters to our Altix product family provides a significant competitive advantage. The combination of one of the industry’s best performing 10GbE adapters and our scalable server platform is a winning combination for SGI customers.”

The unified wire concept is a clear pointer to coming FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) capability. Chelsio appears to be actively developing FCoE capability, witness this job ad, and we can look forward to a T4 fourth generation ASIC with Converged Network Adapter functionality adding FCoE to the mix above.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}