Intel’s New Communications Platform (codenamed Romley) with Dual Processors and 16 Cores

The FW-8895 has dual next generation Intel processors built in, with a total of 16 cores. The FW-8895’s mother board comes fitted with 16 DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 128GB of RAM and 80 PCIe 3.0 lanes.

Intel’s Next Generation Communications Platform & Acceleration Technology

When fitted the optional chipset module, the FW-8895 can take full advantage of Intel’s QuickAssist acceleration technology. Coupled with Intel’s next generation CPU, the FW-8895 is capable of meeting the demand for computing power and for accelerating security packet processing.

Cavium Nitrox Security Acceleration Processor

Depending on the SKU chosen, the FW-8895 may come with the optional Cavium Nitrox CN1620 security acceleration processor. The highly scalable CN1620 is capable of delivering optimal performance ranging from 500Mbps to 2.5 Gbps for full IPsec protocol or SSL offload, 1024bit exponent RSA from 4K to 17K RSA operations per second, making it the perfect solution for applications such as integrated VPN/Firewall appliances, load balancers, WAN optimization, application delivery controllers, UTM gateways and server offload.

8 Ethernet Modules & 65 GbE Ports

The FW-8895 can be fitted with up to eight Ethernet modules, increasing the number of GbE ports to a total of 65. When the FW-8895 is fitted with only four Ethernet modules, the option of having four 3.5” HDD bays with SATA or SAS interface (Patsburg-D only) is available. Other customizing options may be available upon inquiry.

800W Redundant Power

Dual power supplies are utilized to ensure a constant flow of power for appliances that need to be on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year; every failure, regardless of the length of time, is equal to lost dollars. The FW-8895’s dual power supplies allow redundancy protection for users that have highly sensitive networks. For maximum effectiveness, these power supplies should be connected to different sources of electricity (i.e. wall socket + battery).

Watchdog Control LAN Bypass & Power Off LAN Bypass

The embedded watchdog monitors the system so that it can automatically trigger a reset if software hangs ; bypass ports allow users to have uninterrupted network traffic even if a single in-line appliance is shut down or is hung. Both are essential features of a network appliance.

Data Direct Input/Output (DDIO)

Input and output performance is maximized with Intel’s latest innovation Data Direct I/O (DDIO).

In the past I/O was slow because processor caches were small and processors were designed to use the main memory as the primary destination and source of I/O data.

With 10 Gb Ethernet becoming prevalent in the data center and the increase in I/O bandwidth (to the processor) because of PCIe3 Integrated I/O, Intel’s re-architected Xeon processor now offers up to 20 MB of last-level cache for Data Direct I/O so that Ethernet controllers and NICs can talk directly to processor cache, providing benefits such as increased bandwidth, lower latency, and lower power consumption.

DDIO makes the processor cache the primary destination and source of I/O data, providing benefits such as reduced latency/power consumption and a more scalable I/O bandwidth.

Furthermore, DDIO has no dependencies on hardware or software and it requires no industry enabling.

The mix of the aforementioned benefits depends on the workload:

  • I/O-bound workloads characteristic of telecom, data plane, and appliances can see dramatic, scalable performance benefits and reduced power consumption.
  • Data center workloads that are not I/O bound or response time critical will primarily benefit from reduced power consumption.
  • Applications where response time is critical like financial trading and HPC will see lower latency and substantially higher transaction rates.

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