Web hosting providers, IT managers or web site owners who want to speed up a server may want to consider a TCP/IP offload engine aka TOE.
CPU processors are designed primarily for doing calculations and not for taking in and putting out data and as a result Ethernet network speeds have surpassed processor speeds which creates a bottleneck that keeps data from flowing through the network. That is, the TCP/IP stack is being processed at a lower rate than the network’s speed. A TCP/IP offload engine is a chip that sits either on the network card or the host bus adaptor and expresses the TCP/IP stack.
For every 1Kbps of network traffic 1KHz of CPU is needed to process it. Because an Ethernet port is bi-directional, at 1 Gbps in and 1 Gbps out, a processor would need to run at 4Ghz to process the TCP/IP stack.
Semiconductor company LeWiz has recently come out with a new TOE with claims that the dual Gigabit Ethernet ports on its Magic2020 HBA enable the card to support throughputs of up to 4Gbps.
In order to verify their lofty claims LeWiz contacted Synchromesh Computing to do some benchmarking.
"At first, Synchromesh Computing was a bit skeptical about the very concept of using a separate processor to reduce the workload of the main CPU or CPU's in a PC or server machine," said Synchromesh Computing CEO Alan R. Weiss. "We found that indeed this works as designed. First, we proved the very value proposition of TCP/IP Offload Engines in general, and then we found that the LeWiz solution (LeWiz MAGIC 2020 TCP/IP Offload Engine) is superior to the Alacritech and Adaptec offload engines, and also superior to the Intel Gigabit Network Interface Card (NIC) and the Broadcom 10Base1000 NIC for the tests we performed. We have the certified data to back up these statements," he explained. "This young company really has the goods."
With a price tag of nearly a thousand dollars the LeWiz TOE may not meet everyone’s needs but a TOE could well give a web hosting provider a jump on the competition in terms of high performance networking services.
