Napatech announces availability of Napatech’s 400Gbps programmable SmartNIC solutions. This leverages Intel Agilex 7 FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) to deliver performance for applications in security, cloud services, network monitoring and recording.
Enterprises and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) providing high-performance solutions for network monitoring and recording require NICs with a performance level that matches PCI Express (PCIe) bandwidth available in servers such as those based on 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors.
This new Napatech NT400 SmartNIC platform, based on Intel FPGA SmartNIC N6000-PL Platform, addresses this need through a PCIe Gen 4 16-lane host interface which enables full-duplex 2x100Gbps traffic between network ports and host applications. Similarly, for applications like 5G packet core in telecom infrastructure that require high-bandwidth inline processing of network data, NT400 platform sustains a total 400G of traffic over tens of millions of flows.
NT400 programmable SmartNIC platform includes two QSFP56 network ports, supporting up to 2x200G traffic with flexibility to configure 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G and 200G network links. SmartNIC hardware is complemented by Napatech’s portfolio of production-grade software packages, including Link-Capture for use cases such as network monitoring and recording, Link-Virtualisation that provides a virtualised data plane for cloud services and Link-Inline for inline applications such as 5G user plane function (UPF).
These integrated solutions deliver a true “IT experience” whereby user just installs a card and software, immediately achieving acceleration of their application with no requirement to directly programme SmartNIC itself.
At core of NT400 platform is Intel Agilex 7 FPGA F-Tile chiplet, which incorporates a configurable, hardened Ethernet protocol stack for supporting rates from 10G to 400G. Napatech chose Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for a host of reasons, including scalability options that allow support for five different configurations that meet various price, performance, power and feature goals, tailored to specific customer applications and use cases.
These F-Tile features are critical in enabling NT400 to operate within a space and power limitations of standard servers deployed in network appliances, data centers and edge locations.
“As the networking landscape continues to evolve, SmartNICs emerge as the predominant growth catalyst in the expansive NIC market, poised to reach $3.3 billion (€3.07 billion) annually by 2025” says Manoj Sukumaran, principal analyst for datacenter compute and networking at Omdia. “High bandwidth programmable Ethernet adapters require very fine optimisation in hardware and software to ensure deterministic and predictable processing time and making them suitable for real-time networking applications. Napatech is among the very few vendors who could provide highly optimised SmartNICs and software solutions leveraging FPGAs from vendors like Intel, and deliver highly efficient network offload capabilities” he adds.
“The NT400 platform represents the latest generation within our portfolio of SmartNIC solutions,” says Jarrod Siket, chief marketing officer at Napatech. “We will deliver multiple SKUs based on this platform, providing products with memory configurations as well features like time synchronisation and management ports that are precisely tuned to the requirements of our customers’ applications, all packaged with the applicable production-grade software.”
“We are delighted to see Napatech choose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for their leading-edge SmartNIC solutions,” says Mike Fitton, vice president programmable solutions group and general manager, network business division at Intel. “The combination of our FPGAs, which deliver high performance, and power efficiency plus a rich feature set for the most demanding applications, together with Napatech’s production-grade hardware and software, helps ensure that customers can deliver leading solutions for a wide range of enterprise and telecom applications.”
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