What is SmartNIC?

When smartphone appeared 15 years ago, it changed mobile communication completely . 

Today, smart network interface card ( SmartNIC ) is setting off a similar revolution in the data center.However, what is SmartNiC and How do you use it ? We will reveal it in this article.

With the rapid development of cloud and virtualization technologies in data centers,the Open vSwitch (OVS) and various virtualization network functions implemented on X86 based on Kernel architecture already cannot guarantee forwarding performance and consume a lot of computing resources.

Then, DPDK came along, and the performance was greatly improved, but the processing still relies on servers and standard network interface card (NIC) that weren’t optimized for data transmission, and there are still performance bottlenecks and the problem of occupying too much computing resources.

The growth of CPU computing power couldn’t catch up with the growth of network transmission rate, the demand for specialized computing on the network side is highly increasing. How to solve the contradiction between application function requirement and software implementation?

As a result,the hardware-based Smart Network interface Card (SmartNIC ) is born to offload various features like virtual network, security, storage, etc.

Offloading services that are not suitable for CPU but processing through SmartNIC is to meet acceleration requirements of the data plane forwarding and reduce the burden of CPU computing power.

SmartNIC has various usage, ranging from network acceleration, storage acceleration to security acceleration.

• Network function accelerations such as VTEP, OVS offload, TCP offload, GRE/GTP tunnel encapsulation and decapsulation, reliable UDP,etc.
• Security function accelerations such as IPSec, SSL, XDP/eBPF, vFW/vLB/vNAT, DPI, and DDoS defense,etc.
• Storage function accelerations such as NVMe-oF (TCP) and data compression/decompression,etc.

About Asterfusion Helium SmartNIC

Asterfusion Helium SmartNIC is a 25GE Ethernet smart network interface card (SmartNIC)based on a high-performance SoC chip (24-core ARM integrated with multiple hardware-acceleration co-processors) . It can provide up to 100Gbps multi-functional service processing capability which enables customers to build high-performance intelligent programmable networks while preserving valuable computing resources in servers and reducing the total CAPEX of cloud data centers.

In the cloud era, the demand for virtualization features is getting increasingly higher ,and the requirements for network functions are also enhancing which requires the network architecture to be more open.

Based on Asterfusion’s fully open software architecture, which creates an open and compatible network ecosystem for our customers.

Through a very simple compilation process various x86-based DPDK applications and generic Linux drivers can be easily ported to Asterfusion Helium SmartNIC. Customers can flexibly combine functions based on their network actual requirements to meet deployment needs in different environments, as easily and quickly as people install various apps on their phones according to their preferences.

Asterfusion Helium SmartNIC comes with a basic network operating system framework, FusionNOS- Framework. Network developers can use FusionNOS-Framework as the foundation to develop their own upper-layer applications, thus accelerating application porting & development.

More Application Scenarios Exploration of SmartNIC

Asterfusion SmartNIC can be widely used in network acceleration, storage acceleration, security acceleration and others. We have also conducted many application scenarios verification practices, such as cloud network function offloading (OVS/VXLAN), 5G UPF, SSL offloading, network visibility ,etc.

✻ Cloud network offload acceleration

Asterfusion SmartNIC can support a variety of cloud network offloading implementation. Customers can deploy flexibly according to their needs, which maximizes the utilization efficiency of server resources and delivers performance improvements for their business applications.

✻ 5G UPF

Asterfusion SmartNIC supports the complete UPF functions offload (signaling plane and user plane), realizing seamless integration with MEC Host,which ensures logical isolation between UPF and MEC, without affecting each other.

UPF no longer relies on the processor of the server, and does not need to consider the compatibility and adaptation of VNF and edge cloud either. It can effectively reduce the security risks of the core network and reduce the difficulty of UPF and MEC co-platform deployment in edge scenarios.

✻ Cloud network offloading while integrated visualization

Asterfusion SmartNIC can load various third-party VNF functions based on the container environment while offloading cloud network functions, meantime, providing flexible traffic scheduling capabilities for external networks, VMS, and VNF containers.

Asterfusion SmartNIC Feature Summarize :

• Up to 100Gbps multi-functional service processing capability
• DPDK applications on x86 can be easily ported
• Deployed in many scenarios like network, security and storage acceleration offload                                                            For more visit: https://cloudswit.ch/