New Trends Make 10 Gigabit Ethernet the Data-Center Performance Choice

WHITE PAPER | New Trends Make 10 Gigabit Ethernet the Data-Center Performance Choice
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footprint with greater performance per watt. This
makes multi-core processors ideal for traditional
server architectures and particularly well suited for
blades and other high-density computing needs
where space and cooling are at a premium.
Servers based on Intel multi-core processors allow
data centers to grow compute power without
growing space or cooling requirements. Replacing
older single-core servers with multi-core servers
can deliver three to five times the compute power
within the same hardware footprint. Even greater
efficiencies can be achieved by consolidating
applications onto fewer, more powerful servers.
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The multiplied capabilities and efficiency of
multi-core processor-based systems also raises
the demand for I/O capacity. While the multi-
core server does provide ample headroom for
consolidating multiple applications onto the server,
the aggregation of application I/O traffic can
easily require the additional bandwidth of 10GbE
connectivity for optimum network performance.
However, additional connectivity bandwidth
alone is not the complete answer to improved
throughput. Potentially significant bottlenecks exist
throughout the various server I/O processes. Intel
®
I/O Acceleration Technology (Intel
®
I/OAT) is designed
specifically to address system-wide bottlenecks.
Intel I/OAT is a suite of features that enables
efficient data movement across the platform—
network adapters, chipset and processors—thereby
improving overall system performance by improving
CPU utilization and lowering latency. The different
features include Intel
®
QuickData Technology,
Direct Cache Access (DCA), Message Signaled
Interrupts-Extended (MSI-X), low latency interrupts
and Receive Side Coalescing (RSC).
Intel QuickData Technology enables data copy by
the chipset instead of the CPU, and DCA enables the
CPU to pre-fetch data, thereby avoiding cache misses
and improving application response times. MSI-X
helps in load-balancing interrupts across multiple
MSI vectors, and low latency interrupts automatically
tune the interrupt interval times depending on the
latency sensitivity of the data. RSC provides light-
weight coalescing of receive packets that increases
the efficiency of the host network stack.
Intel I/OAT is a standard feature on all Intel
network connections for PCIe and on Dual-Core
and Quad-Core Intel
®
Xeon
®
processor-based
servers. It accelerates TCP/IP processes, delivers
data-movement efficiencies across the entire server
platform, and minimizes system overhead.
In addition to supporting Intel I/OAT, all Intel 10
Gigabit Server Adapters for PCIe are tuned to
optimize throughput with multi-core processor
platforms. These new networking features increase
performance by distributing Ethernet workloads
across the available CPU cores in the system. These
server adapter features include:
• MSI-X – Distributes network controller interrupts
to multiple CPUs and cores. By spreading out
interrupts, the system responds to networking
interrupts more efficiently, resulting in better
CPU utilization and application performance.
• Multiple Tx/Rx queues – Is a hardware feature
that segments network traffic into multiple
streams that are then assigned to different CPUs
and cores in the system. This allows the system to
process the traffic in parallel for improved overall
system throughput and utilization.
• Receive Side Scaling – Called Scalable I/O in Linux*,
distributes network packets to multiple CPUs and
cores. This improves system performance by using
software to direct packets to the appropriate CPU
based on IP, TCP, and port address.
•Low Latency – Allows the server adapter to run a
variety of protocols while meeting the needs of the
vast majority of applications in high-performance
computing (HPC) clusters and grid computing. Intel
has lowered Ethernet latency with adaptive and
flexible interrupt moderation and by streamlining
different operating system (OS) stacks.