NEWS
Wind River Launches Integrated Network Acceleration Product for Local Area and Storage Networks
Networking speeds have been increasing by a factor of 10 every 2 years, outpacing improvements in microprocessor performance. With Gigabit Ethernet becoming common throughout the Internet infrastructure, server and storage devices have been greatly impacted by this increase. As they struggle to keep up with network demand, application performance steadily erodes, to the dismay of IT professionals charged with maintaining productive systems. TINA offers a solution to this dilemma by introducing a specialized architecture that offloads network processing to an intelligent network interface.
"Today's server and storage products grind to a halt at Gigabit speeds, and 10 Gigabit is right around the corner," said Dave Fraser, vice president and general manager of Wind River's Networks business unit.
The most common approach for dealing with this challenge is to purchase additional, more powerful servers, an extremely expensive solution that will only be exacerbated by current trends. In addition, IT departments will often buy multiple NICs per server, which quickly erodes application performance as the host CPU spends all of its cycles processing network requests.
"By offloading the TCP/IP stack with the TINA solution onto an intelligent NIC, servers are able to meet networking performance demands while sparing precious CPU cycles for applications, all in a very cost efficient manner," added Fraser. "Laboratory tests by Wind River have yielded Performance Efficiency Index results of twice that of currently available solutions using traditional NICs."Â Â The Performance Efficiency Index, originally developed by PC Week (now eWeek) in 1995, measures networking throughput relative to CPU utilization.
TINA is also an ideal solution for the SAN market where high performance networking at Gigabit speeds is a necessity. In particular, TINA enables more cost effective and interoperable IP and Ethernet technology to replace the current Fibre Channel transport in the data center. Additionally, TINA is an ideal platform for emerging IP-based storage technologies such as intelligent small computer system interface (iSCSI).
"Gigabit Ethernet forces a change in the way Ethernet has been used in the past," said Dan Tanner, Senior Analyst, Storage and Storage Management for the Aberdeen Group. "Implementing IP-based SANs is simple and cost-efficient. Wind River's software solution is the only one on the market today. It gives their customers a way to handle the dramatic changes that are taking place."
The need to increase network speeds is important for the server market as well. According to research firm IDC, Gigabit Ethernet end user revenues will grow at an annual rate of more than 100 percent through 2004, when they will overtake 100-Mbps Fast Ethernet as the dominant LAN switching technology.
"Intel® I/O Processors with the Intel XScale"! Microarchitecture provide the high performance platform necessary to build the next generation of intelligent storage and I/O applications. Tornado for Intelligent Network Acceleration is a perfect example of a tool that will help developers quickly build applications on top of the Intel XScale Microarchitecture using best of breed tools from industry leaders like Wind River," said Wendy Vittori, general manager of Intel's I/O products and bridges division. "TCP/IP off-load is rapidly emerging as a critical piece of the equation in the area of high-performance I/O applications."
About TINA
TINA is comprised of the Tornado integrated development environment, including the IxWorks"! real-time operating system (RTOS), which shares the same kernel and full application programming interface (API) as the VxWorks 5.4 RTOS, and is specifically designed for high-throughput I/O environments. TINA also includes a reference board based on the Intel® 80200 Processor with Intel XScale"! Microarchitecture. Additionally, TINA's APIs are exposed, which allows developers to write customized applications such as virtual private networks and firewalls. An application development kit will be made available later in the year to support third party software development.
About Wind River
Wind River is a worldwide leader in embedded software and services for creating connected smart devices. Wind River provides software development tools, real-time operating systems, and advanced connectivity for use in products throughout the Internet, telecommunications and data communications, digital imaging, digital consumer electronics, networking, medical, computer peripherals, automotive, industrial automation and control, and aerospace/defense markets. Wind River is How Smart Things Think"!. Founded in 1983, Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, California, with operations in sixteen countries worldwide.
Wind River Systems, the Wind River Systems logo, How Smart Things Think, Tornado, IxWorks, and VxWorks are registered trademarks of Wind River Systems, Inc. Intel and Intel XScale are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Intel corporation. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective companies or organizations.
Contact Information
Jessica Miller
Global Corporate Communications