October 3, 2006 -- Ample Communications, a provider of Ethernet silicon for wired communications, has introduced a high-performance LAN platform for volume servers. With the platform, 16 Gbit/sec of full-duplex throughput can be achieved on a volume dual-core server platform, representing an industry first, according to the company.
To enable a mainstream server to deliver such high LAN throughput, 9 ports of the company's high-performance GbE (1000BASE-T) silicon are used. According to the company, competitive LAN platforms cannot deliver such high throughput, as these systems completely saturate a server's dual-core or quad-core CPU even at much lower throughputs, which directly degrades LAN and server performance.
Ample says its LAN silicon enables this high level of performance over a standard Category 5 cable infrastructure, while keeping overall platform costs and power consumption low. According to the company, the silicon is able to deliver such high performance because of its highly efficient architecture, which performs processing in low-cost, low-power hardware, enabling easily scalable performance. Further, the company says the silicon significantly reduces the CPU-load in the server, allowing the server CPU to do more, as compared to servers in other LAN systems.
Ample says its high-performance LAN architecture provides 4-port, high-performance GbE as a baseline feature for volume servers, with the ability to scale up to more than 8 ports. The platform will also enable high performance 10GbE (10GBASE-T) devices for the single and multi-port 10G needs of next-generation servers, contends the company.
"With our LAN solution, customers can immediately deploy new high-performance LAN-centric applications, which were not previously possible," says Sanjay Sharma, chief strategy officer for Ample Communications. "Our solution also enables high performance and high capacity for server applications such as virtualization, storage-servers, security-servers, database-servers, media-servers, and others."