Mellanox® Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ:MLNX), a leading supplier of high performance cloud and storage networking solutions, today announced the BlueField™ family of programmable processors for networking and storage applications. The BlueField family of devices addresses an increasing need in the industry for higher levels of SoC (System-on-Chip) integration to simplify system design, lower total power, and reduce overall system cost. BlueField incorporates Mellanox ConnectX® network acceleration offload technology together with an array of high-performance 64-bit ARMv8 CPU cores that leverages the Tilera coherent mesh interconnect technology from the recent acquisition of EZchip®. The result is a device that delivers unmatched levels of integration for multiple applications, including dataplane offload for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), advanced networking and security, and serving as the embedded storage controller of an array of solid state Flash drives.

“We have leveraged our industry-leading ConnectX technology in the BlueField SOCs to achieve unmatched networking throughput and low-latencies,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of marketing, Mellanox. “Our ConnectX adapter technology is the industry standard for connectivity and has become pervasive throughout the industry. Now, when combined with the multicore technology from EZchip, the vision of a Software-Defined dataplane accelerator can be realized.”

The BlueField family features Mellanox’s latest generation ConnectX network acceleration technology integrated with an array of high-performance 64-bit ARMv.8 processor cores and multiple Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) 100Gb/s networking ports supporting InfiniBand and Ethernet. The advanced SkyMesh™ coherent on-chip interconnect – proven in multiple generations of Tilera processors – enables scalable performance and leading power efficiency.

Key Technical Features

  • Industry-leading network I/O, with both Ethernet and InfiniBand support
  • Multi-rate ports supporting 10, 25, 40, 50, 56 and 100 Gb/s
  • Comprehensive networking offloads including VXLAN, NVGRE, GENEVE overlay networks, RSS, TSS, HDS, LRO, LSOv2, RDMA, and RoCE
  • Low latency NVMe over Fabrics translation between PCIe and Ethernet/InfiniBand
  • High-bandwidth PCIe controllers with Gen3 and Gen4 support as well as SRIOV
  • Tiled array of ARMv8 processor cores with unified virtual memory system
  • Three-level cache hierarchy with scalable distributed hardware coherency
  • Multi-DDR4 memory controllers with ECC, supporting up to 2667MT/s
  • Integrated security acceleration for protocols including IPsec, SSL/TLS, DTLS and data-at-rest applications
  • High-performance crypto acceleration for AES, SHA, RSA, DSA, Elliptic Curve and Diffie-Hellman
  • Integrated cores leverage the vast ARM software ecosystem for development tools and pre-ported applications
    • Typical runtime environment is based on KVM/Linux and standard frameworks and applications such as DPDK, OVS, Ceph, etc.
  • Accelerated Network Functions Virtualization and Open Virtual Switch offload support

The BlueField family of devices is ideal for intelligent PCIe programmable adapters for advanced server offload for cloud, Web 2.0, Big Data, storage, enterprise, HPC, and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) applications. In addition, a new generation of scalable solid-state storage appliances can incorporate BlueField as a highly integrated storage controller SoC, with optimized I/O features together with the throughput and low-latency needed to keep up with the latest Flash-based drives.

The first BlueField SoC devices are planned for sampling in Q1 of 2017, with additional family members in the 2nd half of 2017.

Supporting Industry Quotes:

“Flash is causing wholesale changes in storage architectures. In order to match the networking bandwidth to new storage requirements, storage system vendors will soon start to roll-out new high-performance line of NVMe-based systems,” said Stu Miniman, senior analyst, Wikibon. “Mellanox has a proven history of low-latency and high performance, which is furthered with BlueField, a storage controller with RDMA and NVMe over Fabrics fast path implementation, plus a programmable array of ARM cores that gives OEMs the flexibility to differentiate their products.”

“Almost every storage systems vendor has plans to roll-out high-performance NVM-based platforms,” said Michael Oros, executive director, SNIA. “Mellanox is an active contributor to the SNIA NVM Programing Technical Workgroup and the Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI). These industry standards and initiatives will be at the core of new storage system designs, particularly as SNIA NVM and Persistent Memory Programing standards are rolled out and adopted. Mellanox adds to this list of capabilities with early work in remote access to persistent memory, and we are excited to have these innovations being championed within SNIA and brought to market by our members.”

“As a networking offload co-processor, BlueField will complement the host processor by performing wire-speed packet processing in-line with the network I/O, freeing the host processor to deliver more virtual networking functions (VNFs),” said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at the Linley Group. “Network offload results in better rack density, lower overall power consumption, and deterministic networking performance. Furthermore, programmable network adapter cards can be updated to new and emerging networking protocols as well as implementing VNFs directly on the card.”

Supporting Resources:

  • Mellanox website
  • BlueField Product Page
  • Follow Mellanox on: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube
  • Join the Mellanox Community

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements related to the timing of sampling of BlueField SoC devices, the roll-out of new high-performance lines of NVMe-based systems, new storage system designs and how BlueField will complement the host processor. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry and business, management’s beliefs and certain assumptions made by us, all of which are subject to change. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as “projects,” “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “predicts,” “believes,” “seeks,” “estimates,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” “could,” “potential,” “continue,” “ongoing,” similar expressions and variations or negatives of these words. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statement. More information about the risks, uncertainties and assumptions that may impact our business is set forth in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 26, 2016 and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on April 29, 2016. Other risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected may be described from time to time in reports we file with the SEC, including reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Mellanox

Mellanox Technologies is a leading supplier of end-to-end InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect solutions and services for servers and storage. Mellanox interconnect solutions increase data center efficiency by providing the highest throughput and lowest latency, delivering data faster to applications and unlocking system performance capability. Mellanox offers a choice of fast interconnect products: adapters, switches, software, cables and silicon that accelerate application runtime and maximize business results for a wide range of markets including high-performance computing, enterprise data centers, Web 2.0, cloud, storage and financial services. More information is available at: www.mellanox.com.

Mellanox, ConnectX are registered trademarks of Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.