Mellanox Technologies has launched new ConnectX-2 line of I/O adapter device products which expands the performance of applications in data centre, computing and embedded environments.
Mellanox said that the new 40Gb/s InfiniBand, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) or Fibre Channel over InfiniBand (FCoIB) features in ConnectX-2 enhance data centre productivity and services.
Mellanox claims that the ConnectX-2 delivers up to 30% less power consumption than its predecessor, helping data centres to lower their power and cooling costs for server and storage I/O.
According to Mellanox, the InfiniBand adapter products deliver up to 40Gb/s of bandwidth with latencies as low as 1 microsecond. The Ethernet adapter products deliver up to two ports of 10Gb/s bandwidth with 6 microsecond TCP latency or 3 microsecond RDMA latency and kernel bypass for Low Latency Ethernet (LLE) environments.
The company said that the ConnectX-2 enhanced virtualisation support removes barriers to server virtualisation adoptions with improved performance and security with Hypervisor offloads and a complete PCI-SIG Single Root I/O Virtualisation (SRIOV) technology implementation. The PCI-SIG SRIOV support, in conjunction with the system virtualisation technologies, allows multiple OS running simultaneously within a single server to natively share PCI Express devices.
The virtualisation capabilities of ConnectX-2 are expected to free up CPU resources helping each virtual machine to achieve native operating system performance, while resource isolation and protection provides virtual machine security.
Additionally, the ConnectX-2’s support of FCoE and FCoIB provides a performance assist while also enabling I/O consolidation over Ethernet or InfiniBand in data center environments, and benefits IT managers with a improved data center to manage and support.
Reportedly, the ConnectX-2 products are available in a variety of configurations. ConnectX-2 VPI delivers both InfiniBand and Ethernet with auto-sensing or preconfigured QSFP and SFP+ ports. ConnectX-2 EN delivers 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and ConnectX-2 ENt delivers 10 Gigabit Ethernet with integrated 10GBASE-T PHYs.
John Monson, VP of marketing at Mellanox, said: “Mellanox end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet-based connectivity solutions close the gap between processing power and I/O by delivering breakthrough latency, utilisation and efficiency.”
