Intel Extends Virtualization to the Network

The performance of virtual systems is critical to the success of Network Function Virtualization (NFV). From a hardware perspective, the biggest issue is overhead in the processor – a problem that Intel addressed nearly a decade ago with the introduction of Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT). However, NFV also puts serious strain on the network interface. Now developers can address this bottleneck with the new Intel® Ethernet Controller XL710 product family 10/40 GbE, which extends Intel VT to the MAC.

We look at how this controller family extends Intel VT beyond server virtualization to help virtualize the network. I also look at additional blades and NIC modules available from members of the Intel® Internet of Things Solutions Alliance that use this advanced design.

The Intel® Ethernet Controller XL710 Product Family 10/40 GbE

The Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 product family is an energy-efficient 25 x 25 mm chip. Running at 3.8 watts, the Intel Ethernet ControllerXL710 product family delivers up to twice the bandwidth while consuming half the power compared to the previous generation.

The Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 product family features dual 40 GbE, single 40 GbE/quad 10 GbE, and dual 10 GbE configurations. This range meets the needs of a wide range of today’s servers, network and storage appliances, and telecommunications equipment. For example, large data centers and cloud operations can use this controller to help them move to 40 GbE and significantly reduce their cabling costs.

What makes the Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 product family unique for NFV is that the controllers are designed from the ground up to work with highly virtualized Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v3 family (Figure 1). Providing hardware optimizations and off-loads to extend Intel VT to the network, the controllers can intelligently offload networking traffic per VM, enabling near-native performance and VM scalability to reduce I/O bottlenecks. The result is the controllers can improve both packet processing performance and the rapid provisioning of networks. Instead of requiring up to six weeks to get a new service up and running, providers implementing Software-Defined Networks (SDN) and NFV on these Intel® platforms could have performance-optimized services up and running in a matter of hours.

The host-based virtualization technologies include:

• VMDq for Emulated Path – a NIC-based VM queue sorting  that enables efficient hypervisor-based switching
• SR-IOV for Direct Assignment – a NIC-based isolation and switching feature that enables optimal CPU usage in virtualized environments for various virtual station instances.

An innovative offload feature, Intel® Ethernet Flow Director, significantly reduces latency by intelligently directing packets to the CPU core and application that require them. Its programmatic traffic steering feature observes outgoing flows and creates a connection between source and destination. Intel Ethernet Flow Director can support up to 8,000 perfect match values extracted from sampled outgoing packets and stored on die to efficiently classify packets and set the affinity of flows to cores. (For more on this feature, watch this video.)

The Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 product family is also optimized for the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) for additional performance enhancement. This set of software libraries enables faster, more efficient small-packet processing for NFV applications such as firewalls and load balancers.

Adoption of network overlays is important for virtual function segregation. Here, the Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 product family shines as well. These controllers support standards-based offload overlays like Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE), and Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE). Additionally, the Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 product family provides Virtual Bridging support that delivers both host-side and switch-side control and management of virtualized I/O.

The Perfect Team

In generation after generation, the Xeon® processor family has delivered increases in computing performance and integration of key server subsystems. From an I/O perspective, the best network virtualization implementation strategy is to leverage the ever-escalating computing power and cores of the Intel Xeon processor where appropriate and implement complementary accelerations in the network controller. Through its balanced hybrid of compute and off-load with the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 family, the Intel Ethernet Controller XL710 product family enables optimal performance and efficiency for tasks such as flow classification and TCP stateless off-loads.