Competitive Comparison: Intel I/O Acceleration Technology vs. TCP Offload Engine

Intel® Xeon®
processor,
Intel® E7520
chipset
Dual-Core
Intel® Xeon®
processor
5160, Intel®
5000 series
chipset with
Intel® I/OAT
Veritas Network Backup Performance
Dual-Core
Intel® Xeon®
processor
5160, Intel®
5000 series
chipset
Higher Throughput + 18%
100
50
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
Throughput (MB/s)
50
Front-End Server Throughput
Number of TCP Connections
Intel® I/OAT
TCP Offload
Long Duration
Connections
Short Duration
Connections
500 50 500
500
1000
1500
2000
Throughput (MB/s) 2KB I/O
1 KB 2 KB 4 KB 8 KB 16 KB
iSCSI Network Storage
Buffer Size (Bytes)
Standard GbE
Intel® I/OAT
TCP Offload
20
40
60
80
100
12 0
Throughput (MB/s)
Safer Choice— Supported by More OS Vendors
Leading OS vendors support Intel I/OAT with native
protocol stacks instead of relying on third-party
stacks, making it a safer choice when it comes to
maintenance and support. Plus, Intel I/OAT supports
multiport teaming for redundancy, increased network
throughput, and fewer NICs in a server.
Leading Performance
1
Intel I/OAT vs. TOE
• Significantly outperforms TOE in server configurations
that support a large number of users and which
require long-lived connections (e.g., backups/restores,
streaming media serving, large file transfers).
• Significantly outperforms TOE on short-lived
connections (database, mail, and file serving).
• Significantly outperforms TOE in teamed interfaces.
• Provides a much better solution in iSCSI-based
environments.
Operating System Intel® I/OAT TOE
Microsoft Windows*
Server 2003 Scalable
Network Pack Yes Yes
SuSE SLES10* Yes No
Red Hat RHEL5* Yes No
Intel Internal Measurements, date of the data