Networks & Communications Group

One Common Platform for Workload Consolidation

Network Infrastructure Equipment Benefits from Next Generation Communications Platform

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One Common Platform for Workload Consolidation

If you live in the world of communications and networking it would be hard to pick up a trade journal or industry white paper and NOT have it talk about the tremendous growth the industry is experiencing and the positive outlook for the future. It might seem that this is all set perfectly for the equipment manufacturers and service providers to make loads of money and keep their investors happy. However, when much of the world economy is undergoing major austerity measures, consumers and industry watchdogs are asking why costs are so high if the industry is booming. It’s a vicious circle and so all the Network Equipment Providers and Service Providers need to do is increase network capacity and functionality while at the same time reducing consumer cost and increasing value. Then they would make more money - right? If it only it were that simple?

Revenue is but one side of the equation and the cost of funding the continued network build-out is not insubstantial. Maximizing efficiency will be at the core of any strategy designed to take full advantage of the ongoing growth across the networking industry. Efficiency will become a critical metric across all elements of the infrastructure both human and machine.

The complexity of the global communications networks led to a multitude of technologies and implementations. Every new node and function that was envisaged led to a individually configured and specialized hardware platform and each one spawned their own engineering and support teams. This cascaded through the supply chain as service providers needed to ramp up staff and invest heavily in hot-spares to support a multitude of infrastructure elements. What if this could all be reversed?

Consolidation is a well understood strategy where efficiency is concerned and fundamentally looks at how to do more with less. The aim is be in a position to consolidate the hardware platforms that manage the four primary network workloads and styles of processing used in communications equipment - application, control, packet and signal processing. This paper examines how current innovations in processor technology have led to new architectures and designs that can accommodate a move to major workload consolidation in new network platforms.

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What’s the difference between a family 4 door sedan, a truck and a minivan? They are all road going vehicles that can get

you, your passengers and belongings from point A to point B. While designed around the same basic principles i.e. a chassis, 4 wheels and an engine they each have specific design features intended for a very specific purpose. Now imagine one vehicle that could do the job of all three and the flexibility and cost savings it could create. In the world of computing, communications and microprocessors we have just described the challenge and benefits of “workload consolidation.”

All networking and communications infrastructure is designed around a series of specialized network elements or nodes each with their own specific task. The function of these elements can vary widely from heavy duty systems through which all traffic flows to network monitoring and QoS appliances. Given the specialist nature of each element the software is tailored to fit the desired network protocols and processes required for the function plus any differentiated feature sets the manufacturer may add. When it comes to the hardware it is not at all uncommon for each element to be built on a distinctly different underlying architecture.

The physical port requirements for elements that carry live traffic are undoubtedly very different from management nodes, however at the core of all communications systems, no matter their function, you will find state of the art microprocessors.

Depending on their role in the network infrastructure each node is responsible for one or more functions that require a specific style of primary processing capability. One can break down the different styles of processing into four fundamental categories.

Application processing - This primarily relates to the user space application with elements such as the user interface, configuration, management, reporting etc. For networking equipment the application processing usually does not require the highest performance levels.

Control processing - Simply said, in network systems control processing is what goes on in the control plane. In many respects control processing is not dissimilar to the application space in that it does not really touch any of the actual traffic but makes decisions such as how and where the traffic is forwarded or routed. Control plane traffic is transmitted over the network, but volumes (and processing loads) are many orders of magnitude less than with data traffic. That’s where packet processing takes over.

Packet Processing - In most networking systems this is where the rubber meets the road. Packet processing is responsible for the high speed traffic flow through a network or routing node. In what is commonly referred to as the forwarding or data plane, processing must happen as fast as possible and with the minimum of

Consolidation for Network Security Platforms

Advantech is able to count many of the leading network security vendors amongst their customers. Many of the currently deployed platforms are using a mix of general purpose processors along with specialized network processors. The network processors used, have functions designed specifically with security application in mind. Inbuilt features can handle complex virus and spam lookups as well as help handle encryption and authentication tasks.

Network security applications represent a perfect example of how three workloads (application, control & packet processing) can be consolidated and managed by a single processor and platform.

The combination of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series with Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series co-processor and Intel® QuickAssist Technology can now handle the identical roles all in a single chipset. There are built in crypto and compression engines that can handle all the major standard wireless and security crypto requirements. The combined communication platform supports SSL and IPSec with forwarding performance up to 80 Gbps.

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overhead. ‘Wire-speed’ is the goal here i.e. any packet processing required should not impede the traffic flow in any way.

Signal processing -Whereas packet processing elements care not about what they are carrying, other elements certainly do and this is where signal processing comes to the fore. Virtually anything other than basic data content typically requires some level of signal processing. With the amount of digitized voice, audio and now large volumes of video content carried by networks, complex transcoding on the fly is now the norm.

Just as in our vehicle example all processors are based on similar fundamentals, however, many specialized sub variants have evolved. There are general purpose processors that we find in everything from laptops to high performance data center servers to network processors (NPUs) and Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) that were designed for the specialist tasks of packet and signal processing. From a Network Equipment Providers point of view these discrete processor specializations

forced them to design platforms that incorporate all these processor styles. Given how the mix of processing styles can be required in multiple combinations the architectural design of the underlying hardware platforms generate a significant number of discrete variations to maintain.

The bottom line is that these platforms all take time to develop, require differing development environments and will all require their own long term life cycle support plans. This all ends up having a significant impact on both CAPEX and OPEX for the NEPs and their service provider customers.

Now look at the puzzle from the opposite side and just image the benefits of being able to create the

full mix of network elements using a single processor for all four processing requirements. Through the use of a single, fully compatible, processor and hardware architecture, developers would need to support only a single development environment that would create a single compatible code base and allow for significant reuse. At a platform level it would mean a massive reduction in the types of blades utilized translating to lower sparing requirements and major cost savings across

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the board. Only a few years ago this would have seemed about as likely as the single road vehicle. The possibilities are now very close to reality as the latest innovations in processor technology from Intel help underpin their 4:1 workload consolidation strategy.

Earlier in 2012 Intel released the first processors in the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series and in October the Intel platform for communications architecture previously code named Crystal Forest was formally announced. This new platform helps developers make the next big step towards realizing the 4:1 workload consolidation vision. While staying within the fully compatible range of Intel processors it is now practical to build a network platform strategy that gets away from the need for multiple processor architectures. No longer will it be a requirement to discretely match the specific processor to the individual processing styles (application, control, packet and signal processing). Intel® Xeon® processors have long been providing the highest performance levels for application and control plane environments and with the advent of the new Crystal Forest platforms high throughput packet processing is now possible using the single architecture. The Intel® processor roadmap shows how next generation iterations of the fully code compatible family will be capable of handling the majority of signal processing requirements within the next 12 months.

The Intel platform for communications architecture is based on the core processors from the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series but with a completely new Co-Processor/PCH known as the Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series. This chipset is so much more than a PCH and incorporates a number of key performance features that take the platforms capability to an entirely new level. With this new platform developers will be able to assign application, control plane and data plane processing tasks to individual cores and configure the mix as they see fit for the network element they are creating. Two key elements that enable this are the Intel® Data Plane Development Kit (Intel® DPDK), and Intel® QuickAssist Technology.

The Intel® DPDK, includes performance-optimized libraries that enhance packet processing capabilities in the data plane when using multi-core Intel architecture processors such as the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series. Intel® QuickAssist Technology is built into the chipset co-processors and is a set of software and hardware modules that

Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series

The Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series, formerly known as Cave Creek contains hardware engines for encryption, pattern matching, and compression. It also has four GbE ports, 16 PCIe Gen2 lanes for connecting the processor to the accelerators and GbE ports, four lanes of PCIe Gen1, and various system peripherals connectable via DMI. Intel® QuickAssist Technology is a key feature of the new chipset and provides an array of notable security features which include encryption/decryption using AES, DES, 3DES or (A)RC4 algorithms, hashing using , SHA-1/2, MD5or HMAC algorithms, deflate and LZS high-speed data compression.

Intel® QuickAssist Technology enables high-speed, secure data compression, storage and data loss prevention, supporting a range of preprocessing services such as Secure Socket Layer (SSL) acceleration, deep packet inspection and flow classification. Processor-intensive tasks are offloaded to the Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series to relieve the system, in particular in areas such as SSL communicationswhere the initialization and termination of crypto services puts quite a burden on the processor.

Performance

From a performance perspective, the chipset is capable of 28k 1k-bit RSA decrypt operation per second and IPSec forwarding throughput of 20 Gbps with 2 processor cores allocated to data plane processing for IPSec.

With Advantech’s MIC-5333 using 3 FMMs based on the Intel® Communications Chipset 89xxs Series, 80Gbps of IPSec forwarding is well within reach, with 8 of the 16 processor cores still available for other applications. These results provide some guidance for system architects and are provided for informational purposes only. Specific products from Advantech may vary slightly in design and effect actual performance.

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accelerate functions such as bulk encryption, data compression and other security related workloads.

Intel® QuickAssist Technology features are available through a unified set of industry-standard application programming interfaces (APIs). These APIs provide consistent conventions and semantics across multiple accelerator implementations and future-proofs software investments. The combination of the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series with the chipset and its integrated Intel® QuickAssist Technology is expected to deliver up to

20 Gbps crypto throughput per chipset. This stacks up favorably against current alternatives that have utilized the traditional mix of specialized processors.

Once one has begun the workload consolidation strategy through the choice of the underlying Intel processor further benefits in terms of flexibility and scalability can be gained through the choice of hardware platform vendor.

Advantech is proud to be a Premier member of the Intel® Intelligent Systems Alliance. This brings many benefits to Advantech’s customers. For example as new versions of the Intel family of processors are released one can be assured that Advantech products will be upgraded to support the new technology. The level of relationship that Advantech has with Intel guarantees the earliest access to pre release silicon. This results in dramtically accelerated development schedules and in many cases new revisions of Advantech blades and appliance platforms are released in sync with Intel’s formal market release of new processors.

Earlier this year as the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series was released , Advantech released the MIC-5332 AdvancedTCA blade, supporting the new processor, the very next day. With the fall release of the new communications platform incorporating the Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series co-processor Advantech was there again with a number of product ready and waiting. These products include industry leading AdvancedTCA blades, PCIe cards and a new Fabric mezzanine module that allows the chipset and its Intel® QuickAssist Technology accelerators to easily be added to a variety of designs.

MIC-5333 is a dual Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series ATCA blade with built-in flexibility for today’s product line and for future network needs. The multiple FMM sites on board are designed to bring extra flexibility for product differentiation as well as improving ATCA fabric and Intel® QuickAssist Technology acceleration scalability to future-proof next generation networking platform designs. In dual-dual star topologies each MIC-5333 provides up to 160Gbps of network connectivity to the backplane. The FMM-5006 mentioned below adds scalable hardware acceleration features for encryption and compression.

PCIE-3214 is the industry’s most powerful solution for fast and secure network performance, freeing up significant headroom for other workloads. This

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multi-chip, multi-module Intel® QuickAssist Technology accelerator is a half length PCIe card with four Intel® Communications Chipset 89xx Series chips on board designed to boost encryption and compression workload efficiency for the white-box and OEM server market. The PCIE-3214 will allow OEMs to better protect users along with their data and provide for greater traffic throughput using Intel-based hardware acceleration technology.

FMM-5006 is an Intel® QuickAssist Technology accelerator on a Fabric Mezzanine Module (FMM). Deployable on Advantech’s MIC-533x series ATCA blades and high-end Network Application Platforms, it accelerates bulk encryption and data compression and makes it easier to bring fast, secure processing to all network elements. Utilizing Intel® QuickAssist

Technology, multiple FMM-5006 modules can accelerate secure traffic up to 100Gbps on the platform to give customers the ability to handle many more secure transactions and without the cost of specialized solutions.

NeTarium ATCA Systems range from 2-slots to 14-slots, providing system-level switching capacities of over 1.28Tbps at the high-end for up to 12 MIC-5333 blades with 192 Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 Series cores. Based on a single Intel architecture, the systems provide the packet processing and application performance necessary to support a wide range of software workloads such as policy and charging enforcement, network security, real-time traffic monitoring, load balancing, subscriber analytics and content optimization among others.

To summarize, we have discussed how network elements have traditionally run different workloads on different hardware architectures, like packet processing on network processors and control and application processing on general purpose processors. Today, all of these workloads can be consolidated onto a single architecture, thanks to the extraordinary performance gains from Intel multi-core technology.

Application, control plane and packet processing are already running in applications deployed on Advantech systems based on Intel processors. In addition, Intel continues to add new instructions and optimized software libraries to further enhance signal processing performance and is on a path to deliver workload consolidation for application, control plane, packet and signal processing.

To rejoin the multi-purpose car analogy at the beginning of this document, Advantech’s ATCA blade, the MIC-5333 takes the single processor architecture concept one step further to one of a common blade for all workloads. For a Network Equipment Provider, establishing a common platform provides a more cost efficient method for shared product management and a combined strategy across product lines with shared upgrade paths. Product groups can focus on the added value of their individual business without being distracted by the complexities of base platform support. With Intel and Advantech on your side you can take advantage of workload consolidation and be one step closer to greater platform and network efficiency.

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Advantech Contact Information

Hotline Europe: 00-800-248-080 | Hotline USA: 1-800-866-6008Email: NCG@advantech.com.twRegional phone numbers can be found on our website at http://www.advantech.com/contact/

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