BCM5708S

Description

The BCM5708S is the world's first 2.5 Gigabit controller and is part of the NetXtreme II™ family of C-NICs (converged network interface controllers). BCM5708S through delivering 2.5 Gigabit networking throughput with convergence technology designed to boost server performance (i.e. TCP/IP offload engine, iSCSI, and Remote Direct Memory Access), Broadcom's new C-NIC is able to more than double the throughput of standard Gigabit networking while decreasing overall CPU utilization by up to 5 times. BCM5708S is designed as a cost-point replacement to existing 1GbE implementations, the new 2.5 Gigabit Broadcom® NetXtreme II C-NIC is optimized for embedded blade server applications.

Through BCM5708S, OEMs are able for the first time to design-in an ultra high-speed 2.5 Gigabit C-NIC device to perform all of the networking I/O functions over a single, unified Ethernet fabric. The BCM5708S eliminates the need for specialized networks and will fundamentally change the way that blade servers are built today. Not only do NetXtreme II C-NICs converge four separate network fabrics over standard Ethernet, but they also increase the I/O throughput up to two-and-a-half times while reducing host CPU utilization by up to five times. BCM5708S technology accomplishes this by providing convergence over Ethernet in the form of TOE-accelerated Ethernet for data networking, hardware-accelerated iSCSI for storage, RDMA for clustering, and a separate high-speed sideband interface for remote management.