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QAT Whitepaper

1. Introduction

PowerEdge MX is the first Dell EMC server to offer a software licensing option to enable Intel

QuickAssist Technology.

It provides a software-enabled foundation for security, authentication, and compression, and significantly increases the

performance and efficiency of standard platform solutions. This paper will explore uses of Intel

QAT with two examples.

1.1 Encryption and Key Generation

Many users will be familiar with the “https” prefix on frequently-visited websites. Behind all of these secure websites

is an implementation of TLS (transport layer security) or its predecessor SSL (secure sockets layer). Each protocol entails

a “handshake” between the client and server that establishes authenticity of the server and creates a session key for

encrypting the exchanged data. These Public Key Encryption (PKE) algorithms, historically performed by software,

can be offloaded from the CPU into the Intel

QAT engine for providing significant performance gains for Web Server,

Content Delivery Networks, eCommerce, VPN, Firewall or Security Load Balancer and Wan Acceleration solutions.

1.2 Data Compression and Decompression

Users of compressed file formats will be familiar with the benefit of another function provided by Intel

QAT. Like

cryptography, compression and decompression can be compute-intensive functions. Intel

QuickAssist Technology

(Intel

QAT) is comprised of acceleration engines for data compression as well, yielding faster performance, lower latency

and higher throughput for software and systems that rely on compressed data such as storage, web compression,

big data, or high-performance computing (HPC).

Compressing data before it is stored on a hard drive provides the dual benefit of reducing the time to complete both writes

and subsequent reads, and increasing the amount of data that can be stored on the drive system.

Compressing data before transmission over a network improves overall network utilization by reducing the number

of TCP/UDP segments and as a result the number of IP packets. This allows more data to be sent and received

without the need to expand the network interfaces.

In both of these examples, the benefit is achieved by compressing and decompressing data before it is consumed

by a slower component in the compute infrastructure.

1.3 Software Licenses for Intel

QAT in PowerEdge MX

Intel

QAT has a long history with the deliveries of the 8920 model and the subsequent 8955 on PCIe cards. In the Intel

Xeon

Processor Scalable Family, Intel

is making the next generation of Intel

QAT available with significantly improved

performance in a chipset-integrated version. Dell EMC is offering hardware-enabling licenses for chipset Intel

QAT on the

MX series blade servers (MX740c and MX840c). These licenses can be installed without the need to add hardware to the

system and occupy slots. Depending on the license level installed and the performance level desired, the chipset based

Intel

QAT will be programmed to offer the bandwidth performance as defined below, mimicking the performance of the

latest model 8960 and model 8970 PCIe cards. The licenses are installed through the iDRAC license manager.

QAT license

Compression

Encryption

RSA

40G ‘mid-range’

28 Gb/s

40 Gb/s

40K Ops/s

100G ‘top performance’

65 Gb/s

100 Gb/s

100K Ops/s