Intel today disclosed features for the company's
next-generation communications platform, codenamed
"Crystal Forest."
The company says that the new platform will handle
data processing across the network more efficiently
and securely, while addressing the specialized needs
for handling cloud connectivity and content
processing.
Intel is trying to make a mark in the network
processor market with the new chipset, where it could
compete with companies such as Cavium, AppliedMicro
and Tilera.
Crystal Forest succeeds Jasper Forest, a Xeon chip
that had an integrated I/O hub and found adoption in
storage devices and server appliances.
With Crystal Forest, equipment manufacturers will be
able to consolidate three communications workloads -
application, control and packet processing - on
multi-core Intel architecture processors. They can
also develop a scalable product line based on
multiple Intel processor options to plan for future
performance increases.
"The demand for increased network performance will
continue to grow as more smart devices connect to the
Internet every day," said Rose Schooler, general
manager of Intel's Communications Infrastructure
Division. "And with the popularity of social
networking and other high-bandwidth services, such as
video and photo uploads/downloads, interactive video,
crowdcasting and online gaming, service providers
will be challenged to efficiently provision
sufficient upstream capacity and manage the spike in
network traffic."
The chipset includes a CPU based on the Sandy Bridge
microarchitecture, I/O, Ethernet interface and new
hardware called QuickAssist. Intel QuickAssist
technology processes and accelerates specialized
packet workloads - cryptography, compression and deep
packet inspection included - on standard Intel
platforms. Using this technology, secure Internet
transactions can be accelerated up to 100Gbps on the
platform to give service providers the ability to
handle many more secure transactions and without the
cost of specialized solutions. The network will also
be able to evolve to provide "always-on" secure
Internet connections, as opposed to the opt-in
connections currently used on select applications or
for financial transactions online.
Intel's next-generation communications platform is
expected to deliver up to 160 million packets per
second performance for Layer 3 packet forwarding,
making it possible to send thousands of
high-definition videos across each network node.
Previously, only ASIC or specialized processors were
capable of sending more than 100 million packets per
second. The Intel Data Plane Development Kit, a set
of software libraries and algorithms, improves the
performance and throughput of packets on Intel
architecture platforms to yield more than five times
the performance over previous generations of Intel
platforms.
Intel designed the Crystal Forest platform to enable
equipment manufacturers to design more flexible
platforms, from small- to medium-sized business
firewalls to high-end routers. Service providers,
too, can save money by deploying fewer complex
platforms, making their network easier to manage and
maintain. The Intel platform roadmap plans to deliver
annual performance refreshes for several years, so
equipment manufacturers and service providers will be
able to scale and refresh their designs to meet
future network needs. Additionally, Crystal Forest
will use a common application programming interface
and common drivers so that multiple designs can be
implemented in much less time and at much lower
development costs.
Developers can accelerate software development,
testing and integration by utilizing a simulation
model of the Crystal Forest platform provided by Wind
River Simics. With Simics, users can model any
Crystal Forest target configuration and then run
unmodified target software on that model. Wind River
Simics enables developers to do BIOS bring-up,
operating-system optimization and application
development more efficiently.
The new platform is scheduled to be available later
in 2012.