Chelsio Demonstrates Next Generation 40G iSCSI At SNW Spring

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Chelsio Communications, a leading provider of High Speed Ethernet Unified Wire adapters and ASICs, today announced it is demonstrating this week at SNW Spring the industry's first 40G offloaded iSCSI performance on its Terminator 5 (T5) ASIC, targeted at next generation Storage Area Networks (SANs).

The demonstration at the Orlando conference marks the debut of Chelsio's 40G storage technology, heralding a new era for iSCSI SAN deployments beyond the SMB space, and providing a crucial performance edge in a time of ever increasing storage demands.   This demo will showcase the highest bandwidth, lowest latency and most scalable SAN solution in the industry – better in every performance metric than the best Fibre Channel solution, establishing a lead that will only increase with the arrival of 100G Ethernet.  These performance advantages will all be available on the ubiquitous standard Ethernet technology, without the need for Data Center Bridging switches.  Running over the routable, robust and proven TCP/IP foundation, iSCSI SAN architectures further enjoy unconstrained scalability.    

Chelsio's iSCSI offload solution is a proven fourth generation design that has been further hardened by the integration of T10-DIX end-to-end support, extending crucial data protection across the entire storage subsystem.

With the emergence of Solid State Storage (SSD) and the rise in 10G Ethernet server connectivity, there is exceptional demand placed on the offload capabilities, transaction latency, and bandwidth and IOPs capacity of the storage adapter to improve efficiency, and to deliver higher performance, particularly at the storage aggregation points.  A high performance iSCSI solution, combined with T10-DIX enhanced data integrity - available in silicon for the first time – is key to unlocking the potential of high performance storage systems and delivering the value proposition to the end user.  Furthermore, iSCSI is part of Chelsio's unified wire solution, comprising in addition 40Gb TCP/IP, UDP/IP, Video, RDMA and FCoE offload capabilGBities, which make a T5-based solution the ideal choice for any high performance storage application.

"The next generation 40G iSCSI storage technology is here, and that is exciting news for enterprise data center, cloud and Big Data customers requiring high performance SAN-based storage," said Saqib Jang, principal and founder, Margalla Communications.  "Chelsio's demonstration shows that iSCSI scales to 40G speeds while preserving the simplicity, reliability and scalability advantages it enjoys.  Chelsio has shown that iSCSI is no longer confined to the SMB space and is indeed one of the highest performance, and highest data integrity enterprise SAN solutions available today."

The Orlando demonstration consists of an iSCSI target utilizing a T5 adapter with a link speed of 40Gb/s connected to a generic Ethernet switch.  Five iSCSI initiator client systems running MS Windows Server 2012 are also connected to the switch using Chelsio 10Gb T420-CR adapters.  The demo fills the 40G pipe to capacity on the target system using iSCSI traffic from the five initiators. 

"The migration from spindles to SSD that is currently underway and the associated need for increased bandwidth aligns perfectly with the arrival on the scene of 40Gb iSCSI," said Kianoosh Naghshineh, president and CEO of Chelsio. "The storage performance is no longer handicapped by the legacy FibreChannel bandwidth, which tops out at 16Gb and with a roadmap that at best will continue to trail Ethernet as Ethernet moves to 100Gb.  Our fifth generation, enterprise grade offload technology combined with our 100Gb roadmap enables storage customers to leverage their software investment into the future while taking advantage of Ethernet's performance curve and economies of scale."

About Chelsio Communications, Inc.

Chelsio is a leading technology company focused on solving high performance networking and storage challenges for virtualized enterprise data centers, cloud service installations, and cluster computing environments.  Now shipping its fourth generation protocol acceleration technology, Chelsio is delivering hardware and software solutions including Unified Wire Ethernet network adapter cards, unified storage software, high performance storage gateways, unified management software, bypass cards, and other solutions focused on specialized applications.  Visit the company at www.chelsio.com.

SOURCE Chelsio Communications, Inc.