Cavium Intros Accelerator CardsCavium Intros Accelerator Cards

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Cavium Networks, a world leader in security, network services and embedded processor solutions, today announced immediate availability of OCTEON XL Accelerator cards targeted at secure network services and compression acceleration in Appliances and Storage Systems. The standard PCI/PCI-X form-factor cards, which are offered in a broad range of 4-port Gigabit Ethernet NIC inline and co-processor configurations, deliver the industry's highest performance from 500Mbps to 6Gbps, enabling the fastest time to market for existing system configurations. The OCTEON XL cards are the first to offer multi-function acceleration for IPsec, SSL, TCP, IPS/AV and compression, as well as high-availability LAN bypass features. They also provide optional flexibility to add proprietary capabilities through full C-programmability of the on-board OCTEON multi-core MIPS64 processor. The OCTEON XL accelerator cards are being rapidly adopted by leading Tier-1 vendors for security and networking appliances and storage products as the fastest way to deliver advanced security and application acceleration.

Rapid Acceleration for all x86 Appliances and Storage Systems

Many current-generation UTM appliances, L4-L7 switches, application gateways, and storage systems have been built using x86-based motherboards with PCI/PCI-X connectivity. With the rapidly-increasing demand for multi-gigabit security and application processing, vendors of this equipment are looking for a way to quickly roll-out new features and increased performance and availability within their current platforms. Cavium's OCTEON XL Accelerator cards offer a ready-to-deploy solution to rapidly add multi-gigabit acceleration for compression/decompression, pattern-matching (RegEx), IPsec/SSL processing, and TCP termination. With OCTEON XL, all of this acceleration is simultaneously supported in a single card, as opposed to using multiple single-function cards. The Gigabit Ethernet NIC configuration allows for reduced PCI-X bus utilization resulting in higher overall system performance. The LAN bypass feature in the OCTEON XL NICPro supports the essential high-availability requirement of inline security appliances and load-balancing systems. Additionally, the optional, C-based programmability of the OCTEON processor on these cards enables OEM customers to add custom processing capabilities to enable differentiated features and future upgradeability.

"Many security- and storage-appliance vendors utilize standard x86-based off-the-shelf designs today," said Bob Wheeler, senior analyst at The Linley Group. "With these new accelerator cards, Cavium is enabling these appliance-OEM customers to quickly increase their system performance using a single existing PCI-X slot. Unlike conventional crypto cards, the OCTEON cards enable OEMs to offload additional CPU-intensive functions such as TCP termination and compression."

Cavium Inc. (Nasdaq: CAVM)