Cavium's 48 Core Workload-Optimized ThunderX_NT™ Processors Enable New Generation of Accelerated NFV, Edge and Core Networking Applications
Scalable Processors Deliver Highest Throughput and Efficiency for Secure COTS Server and Custom Platforms
Apr 27, 2015, 08:00 ET
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 27, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Cavium, Inc., (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of products that enable secure and intelligent processing for enterprise, data center, wired and wireless networking will demonstrate its 48-core, dual-socket capable ThunderX_NT™ family of ARMv8-A based processors with integrated security, networking and virtual flow accelerators. The demonstration will be showcased at Cavium's booth #2027 during INTEROP Conference, April 28-30th at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas.
Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) provides a standard-based approach to virtualizing a range of networking and telecom applications, thus enabling them to utilize common commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. Networking applications such as virtual application delivery controller (vADC), virtual unified threat management (vUTM), virtual router (vRouter), and virtual wireless LAN controller (vWLAN) are beginning to be deployed in NFV frameworks. However, the traditional processors used in COTS platforms lack the required packet throughput, low latency, integrated security and end-to-end virtualization resulting in poor TCO. This drives the need for a new generation of workload-optimized processor solutions that eliminates the bottleneck of current software only implementations.
The ThunderX_NT-based platforms benefit from the fine-grained control of large number of cores, integrated standard low latency Ethernet fabric, 10/40/100 GbE networking, end-to-end virtualization enabled through virtSoC™ technology, and integrated accelerators for packet processing, security, deep packet inspection and virtualization. The ThunderX_NT delivers these capabilities at much higher throughput and at significantly lower cost and power than existing COTS solutions. Additionally, the virtualized applications running on ThunderX_NT, that need high performance transaction security and centralized key management can offload this requirement to Cavium's recently introduced LiquidSecurity™ HSM family.
A typical NFV platform includes elements such as carrier grade operating system, carrier grade hypervisor/containers, Open vSwitch, OpenStack, OpenDaylight, Life-Cycle Management and a set of APIs for data plane acceleration and to integrate the various NFV elements. Cavium is a founding member of Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) and also supports Linaro's industry-standard OpenDataPlane (ODP) initiative which provides near bare-metal performance for NFV applications.
"Enterprises, service providers and cloud data center operators are looking to gain the benefits and flexibility of virtualizing the network to manage dynamically changing workloads and massive data requirements," said Surya Hotha, Director of Product Line Marketing, Infrastructure Processor Group at Cavium. "The ThunderX_NT family provides the processing performance and flexibility by integrating a huge amount of compute along with targeted workload accelerators for secure low-latency networking into a power, space and cost-optimized form factor."
The ThunderX product family includes multiple workload optimized SKUs for next generation Data Center and Networking Applications including the ThunderX_NT for accelerated NFV and other networking applications in the cloud and telco data centers. The ThunderX processor family is fully compliant with ARMv8-A architecture specifications as well as ARM's SBSA and SBBR standards and is widely supported by industry leading Operating systems including MontaVista™, Wind River™, Ubuntu™, Fedora™, OpenSUSE™; Hypervisors such as XEN™ and KVM™; and software tool and application vendors.
Availability
Samples, reference hardware platforms, and a software development kit are available today.
About Cavium
Cavium is a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing in enterprise, data center, cloud and wired and wireless service provider applications. Cavium offers a broad portfolio of integrated, software-compatible processors ranging in performance from 100Mbps to 100Gbps that enable secure, intelligent functionality in enterprise, data-center, broadband/consumer and access and service provider equipment. Cavium's processors are supported by ecosystem partners that provide operating systems, tool support, reference designs and other services. Cavium's principal office is in San Jose, CA with design team locations in California, Massachusetts, India and China. For more information, please visit: http://www.cavium.com.
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