Intel I / O Acceleration Technology

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The I / O Acceleration Technology ( Intel I / OAT ) is a technological development to speed up the input and output (I / O) with which the new server have that a Xeon - Dual Core processor company Intel to use. This is a change in the hardware architecture in which parts of the processing of the network protocol are taken over by the network controller and chipset , which relieves the main processor . For servers that contain I / OAT, Intel must Gigabit - LAN interfaces to be integrated on the motherboard. The architecture serves to convert from Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE). The performance, scalability, reliability and economy should be massively increased through the use of Intel I / OAT.

Why is Intel I / OAT needed?

For some years now, today's network traffic has increasingly overwhelmed the I / O performance reserves of most servers. The resulting performance gap grows with advances in network communication and the increasing demands of transaction processing.

To solve this problem, the Intel I / O Acceleration Technology was introduced with the Bentsley server platform in May 2006 and has since been implemented in all Intel XEON CPUs. Initially, the hardware of the I / OAT was only compatible and executable with Intel's own chipsets and Ethernet cards. But just a few months later, Intel also made it possible for other manufacturers to use the technology under the name “QuickData” and to optimize it for broad use in as many environments as possible. Intel itself has set itself the goal of doing justice to current and future data traffic with I / OAT. In today's GbE operation, (in theory) a maximum of 125 MB of data can be transferred per second.

functionality

Intel chose a holistic platform approach for I / OAT and distributes the data processing process to the individual components that make up the platform - the processor, the chipset, the network controller and the software. I / OAT increases the data throughput for virtual and real network transfers and in some cases significantly reduces the processor load. In contrast to the previous TOEs ( TCP Offload Engines ), I / OAT takes over the complete processing of the protocol as well as the system overhead and memory management.

I / OAT includes, among other things, an integrated and improved DMA engine that enables faster data transfer, an optimized and multi-threading-compatible TCP / IP stack with lower overhead and faster response times , as well as several other techniques for acceleration at the platform level and increase of scalability. The framework relieves the processor of numerous tasks in managing the network traffic. The technology currently scales easily with up to eight Gigabit Ethernet ports.

On the software side, I / OAT requires special operating systems such as Windows Server (from NT kernel 5.2) or Linux (from kernel version 2.6.18.).

The reliability and increased security of the I / OAT results on the one hand from the exclusive use of the trustworthy TCP / IP stacks under the above-mentioned operating systems and on the other hand from the stateless TCP offload used, which includes the established LAN functions such as VLAN and teaming maintains.

This results in fewer risks overall and at the same time less effort for IT support.

Benefits

  • Improved DMA engine for faster data transfer up to twice the maximum data throughput
  • An optimized TCP stack with up to 40% lower CPU overhead enables faster reactions of the entire application
  • Accelerated at the platform level by easily scaling up to eight Gigabit Ethernet ports
  • Thanks to good platform scalability, the I / O performance increases with the performance of the CPU
  • Less risks for IT support by using the trustworthy TCP / IP stacks of Windows Server 2003 and Linux
  • Preservation of established LAN functions such as VLAN and teaming through stateless TCP offload
  • I / OAT is a standard feature of Intel Ethernet adapters, so there is no extra charge for integrated LAN interfaces and network cards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d IO-Acceleration-Technology Whitepaper (English), accessed on December 23, 2011
  2. ↑ http://www.tecchannel.de/server/processoren/432919/alles_neu_intels_xeon_plattform_bensley_glidewell/index6.html