For standard TCP/IP and UDP/IP 10-Gigabit Ethernet applications, these Myri-10G protocol-offload Network Interface Cards (NICs) deliver excellent performance at minimal cost, and are fully compliant with Ethernet standards.

Myri-10G NICs connect to hosts through PCI-Express x8, a 16+16 Gigabit/s full-duplex I/O fabric that is fast enough to keep up with the 10+10 Gigabit/s full-duplex network port. A PCI-X bus, 8 Gigabits/s at best, has only 40% of the 20 Gigabit/s peak data rate needed for 10-Gigabit Ethernet. Myri-10G NICs were the first PCI-Express 10-Gigabit Ethernet NICs on the market, and achieve near wire speed TCP/IP and UDP/IP throughput with 9KByte jumbo frames.

These NICs are available in the standard low-profile PCI-Express add-in card form factor with either 10GBase-CX4 copper or 10GBase-R fiber network ports.

Software. The driver and NIC firmware for 10-Gigabit Ethernet operation is currently available for Linux, Windows, Solaris 10, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD. You can download the drivers (which include the NIC firmware) from this Myri-10G 10-Gigabit Ethernet Driver Download page. The driver was contributed to and accepted in the Linux kernel, and is included in the 2.6.18 and later kernels. However, the driver available by download will be more up-to-date. The driver is also included in FreeBSD 7.0.

Offloads. The driver and NIC firmware implement zero-copy on the send side with all supported operating systems, and, depending on the OS, use a variety of stateless offloads, including:

• Interrupt Coalescing
• IP and TCP checksum offload, send and receive
• TSO (TCP Segmentation Offload, also known as Large Send Offload)
• RSS (Receive-Side Scaling)
• LRO (Large Receive Offload)
• Multicast filtering

The firmware does not currently implement any “stateful” offloads. These NICs and their software are deliberately not TCP Offload Engines. See, for example, http://linux-net.osdl.org/index.php/TOE for some of the reasons why TCP offload "has little merit."

10-Gigabit iSCSI. These NICs may also be used for 10-Gigabit iSCSI. See the Myri-10G iSCSI installation instructions and iSCSI performance measurements.

Form factors. Low-profile add-in cards allow the option of installation in 2U servers without the need for a riser card. NICs with -8A- product codes have standard PCI faceplates. NICs with -8AL- product codes have low-profile PCI faceplates (pictured above). Myricom also produces Myri-10G NICs in other form factors, including for the IBM BladeCenter H. See the full Myri-10G product list for additional information.

Ethernet interoperability has been demonstrated with 10-Gigabit Ethernet switches from Foundry, Extreme, Fujitsu, HP, Quadrics, SMC, Force10, and Cisco (more to come).

PCI-Express interoperability has been verified with all of the common PCI-Express chipsets and many commercially available motherboards. This tabulation of test results with PCI-Express motherboards shows their PCI-Express performance, which can vary significantly between different products.

The power of programmable NICs. Myri-10G NICs include processors and firmware, and can be used in system solutions that go beyond the standard TCP/IP and UDP/IP over Ethernet. These same NICs can be used with the MX (Myrinet Express) software for kernel-bypass operation for low latency and low host-CPU load over either Ethernet or Myrinet networks. See this Low-Latency 10-Gigabit Ethernet product brief (pdf, 112KB).

It is also possible to develop custom 10-Gigabit Ethernet drivers and firmware for demanding applications such as video servers or firewalls. Contact the Myricom Sales Team or Myricom Tech Support for a discussion of your special requirements.

XFPs for 10GBase-R. The IEEE 802.3ae 10-Gigabit Ethernet Standard specifies PHYs with 10.3125-GBaud, 64b/66b-encoded, packet data over serial fiber at three wavelengths:

• 10GBase-SR (850nm, multimode fiber to 26-300m depending on the transceiver and fiber)
• 10GBase-LR (1310nm, single-mode fiber to 10km)
• 10GBase-ER (1550nm, single-mode fiber to 40km)

10GBase-SR is currently the most common and most economical of these three PHYs.

The specifications for the pluggable, 10.3125-GBaud, XFP optical-fiber transceiver are governed by the 10-Gigabit Small Form Factor Pluggable (XFP) Multi Source Agreement (MSA) Group, http://www.xfpmsa.org/. Myricom 10G-PCIE-8A-R NICs ship with an unpopulated XFP socket so that the integrator or customer can use their desired type of XFP, and/or XFPs from their own sources. The following XFPs can be ordered from Myricom:

PHY	Product Code	List price
10GBase-SR	10G-XFP-SR	$500
10GBase-LR	10G-XFP-LR	$900

The Myricom 10G-XFP-SR transceivers are rated for up to 65m cable lengths over 50/125 multimode fiber, which can also be ordered from Myricom.

Standard Sales Terms

Prices are subject to change without notice.
Shipping: FOB origin.
US Terms: Net 30 days.
Export Terms: Prepayment is normally required.
Standard Warranty: 2-year repair or replacement warranty, excluding physical damage or abuse.