Intel Silicon Breakthrough Speeds Server, Network Responsiveness

Intel Silicon Breakthrough Speeds Server, Network Responsiveness

Intel Corporation today provided the first glimpse of a set of silicon technologies that speed the interaction between network data and server applications by up to 30 percent. Intel also announced an agreement with Microsoft to support the technology in forthcoming operating systems.

The breakthrough, known as Intel® I/O Acceleration Technology (I/OAT), is Intel’s newest “*T” technology, a collection of premier silicon innovations. The technology comes at a time when the demands of applications – such as Web commerce, messaging, storage and server clustering – are beginning to chronically overwhelm servers’ responsiveness and the ability to deliver network data to applications quickly and reliably.

“Intel I/OAT demonstrates the advancements that are possible when a problem is approached from a platform perspective,” said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president, Intel Digital Enterprise Group. “The benefit to end users is better performance, particularly on transaction applications, such as Web commerce or electronic banking, while businesses benefit from reduced cost of ownership and improved ability to grow the system.”

While server CPU performance and network bandwidth has improved over the years, the primary method for moving data has not changed. Today, the processor in a server shoulders the total burden of processing, accessing memory and making protocol computations on every piece of data or packet. As a result, much of the processor’s operation is diverted and response time, reliability and the end-users’ experience can suffer.

Intel I/O Acceleration Technology takes a platform approach to addressing this problem by breaking up the data-handling job among all of the components that make up the platform – the processor, chipset, network controller and software. This platform approach reduces the workload on the processor while accelerating the flow of data. The processor’s job is reduced by giving the chipset and network controller responsibility for moving data in and out of memory. Intel also optimized the TCP/IP protocol – an open “etiquette” that enables all types of computers to exchange data via a common language – for Intel-based servers, which cuts the processor’s workload in half,. further freeing it to work on other jobs.

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