Designed Into Storage Networking Products
Storage system architects often face the dilemma of choosing from ill-suited, general-purpose CPUs and generic NPUs to meet the demanding functional requirements and performance goals of storage networking. Because of the high processing demands on storage subsystem designs, a general-purpose microprocessor running even at several GHz cannot deliver the necessary horsepower.
Because they can be optimized for network processing, Tensilica's Xtensa processors have been designed into storage networking products including:
NEC TCP/IP Offload Engine
NEC's iStorage NV8200/7200 Series TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) uses 10 Xtensa processors. There is one TOE engine per blade in the system. The NEC Storage NV8200/7200 speeds throughput of NAS systems, with a throughput of 300 Mbyts/sec., due to the power of the single-chip TOE engine.
NEC's TOE chip handles many of the basic functions required to manager TCP connections including classification, search, management, configuration and processing. One of the 10 Xtensa cores is configured for control management, another core acts as the dispatcher, and the eight remaining Xtensa cores handle TCP and UDP protocol processing tasks for multiple connections in parallel.
"By designing the TOE processor around ten Xtensa processors optimized with storage-network-specific instructions of our own design, our device is both highly optimized and programmable," said Mr. Hidetaka Oki, engineering manager of the System File Products Division at NEC.
NEC's TOE Engine Features 10 Xtensa processors.
At first, NEC tried to design a multi-million-gate chip completely from hard-wired state machines for TCP/IP offload. But this wouldn't give them the programmability they needed. With Xtensa, they got the benefits of a programmable, processor-based solution with the performance of a dedicated, rigid logic solution.
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iStorage NV8220 |
iStorage NV8210 |
Astute Networks Pericles Network Storage Processor
Astute Networks used 10 Xtensa processors running at 267 MHz to get 10 Gbps full-duplex performance in its Pericles storage processor. It offers multiple network and storage protocol support for TCP, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, SCSI, FCIP or proprietary formats - simultaneously.
The Pericles Architecture Features 10 Xtensa Processors.
Pericles features extremely fast processing - 200K connections per second TCP, >350K IOPs.
The Astute Pericles Chip
Neterion 10 Gbps Ethernet Storage
Neterion is a leader in the 10-gigabit Ethernet adapter market, and is using the Xtensa LX processor for next-generation designs.
"Tensilica's automated configurable processor design approach gives us the speed we need with lower power and smaller die size,” stated Dennis Shwed, Neterion’s vice president of hardware engineering. “Tensilica’s Xtensa LX processor delivers the performance levels required for demanding 10-gigabit Ethernet in high-speed server and storage networking applications.”
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