What is a smart network card? What is the function of the smart network card?

What is an intelligent network card ？ The intelligent network card can not only realize the connection function of the network card , It also implements a system that is usually composed of CPU Network traffic processing performed . The smart card can perform encryption / Decrypt 、 A firewall 、TCP/IP and HTTP Handle , This article explains why the utilization rate of intelligent network cards has been rising in recent years from four aspects .
One 、 The network is facing unprecedented pressure
Artificial intelligence 、 machine learning 、 Network security 、 The rise of trends such as Mega scale architecture and cloud services , It puts forward unprecedented requirements for the network , Especially in terms of performance and uptime . These factors, combined with the surge in network usage brought about by telecommuting , Driving network bandwidth 、 An increase in the number of users and active network traffic —— All this adds to the computational complexity of . The growth of network traffic and the increasing complexity of attack media have brought great challenges to the computing nodes of server infrastructure CPU It brings great pressure .
Two 、 What drives the demand for network performance
At present, many services require lower latency to support real-time applications and services deployed at the edge of the network , For example, video conference （Zoom,Microsoft Teams etc. ）、5G And autopilot .
Other factors include the need to support traditional Web Services , And dealing with 5G and IoT And other services , All these put forward high performance requirements for the network .
3、 ... and 、 reduce CPU burden
With the intelligent network card, the data packet processing workload can be transferred from CPU Shift to based on FPGA Smart network card of . By uninstalling the server CPU The network handles workloads and tasks , Smart NIC improves server performance in cloud and private data centers . Driven by the increasing network traffic and computing complexity in the data center , The intelligent network card provides a processing architecture , Provide computing for some workloads through smart cards , And offload these workloads from the general computing kernel , So as to improve the efficiency of the overall solution .
Four 、 Smart NIC can better support data plane workload
In any virtualized network infrastructure , There are a lot of data plane network requirements inside the server . Network workloads are particularly expensive in Computing . Virtual switching alone can occupy the server 90% The above is available CPU resources . Unloading the network task can return these important resources to the application layer .
Encryption algorithm is one of the fastest changing aspects of data plane processing , It is also the most complex and computationally intensive part . The smart card can share this expensive task in a programmable way , Just update the smart card software , You can choose to deploy a new encryption algorithm in the hardware .
With the rapid growth of the demand for data processing in the data center in the enterprise field ,LR-LINK Lianrui also launched Intel based 800 Series of 25G Optical network card （ Brand and model ：LRES1021PF-2SFP28）, The biggest performance feature of this network card is that it supports RDMA Function this function has the same high performance as the intelligent network card 、 High throughput 、 Low latency 、 Programmable and other features , Friends who need network cards can search and enter the official website of Lianrui , There will be special customer service to answer your questions .