“The shift toward network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networks (SDN) represents the most transformative architectural network trend in nearly 20 years. With their promise of open systems and network neutrality, NFV and SDN stand poised to make a far-reaching impact in shaping the communications networks and businesses of tomorrow.
Perhaps the most critical requirement for both NFV and SDN above and beyond openness is high performance. NFV performance can be addressed for many functions by deploying multiple VNFs on multiple VMs and/or cores. This raises many challenges, including switching and data load balancing. Many approaches to answer these challenges involve rigid and, arguably, too restrictive hardware implementations that are only programmable in software and rely once again on rigid, proprietary hardware implementations in SoCs or standard processors.
We at Ethernity Networks are leveraging Xilinx® devices to bring truly open and highly programmable SDN and NFV solutions to the market sooner. Let’s take a look at how Ethernity crafted its solution, after first exploring the promise and requirements of NFV and SDN. Our programmable COTS NIC based on a Xilinx FPGA accelerates the performance of NFV software applications by 50x.”
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