Press release

Mellanox Introduces Ethernet Cloud Fabric Technology Based on the World’s Most Advanced 100/200/400GbE Open Ethernet Switches

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Mellanox® Technologies, Ltd. (NASDAQ: MLNX), a leading supplier of
high-performance, end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data
center servers and storage systems, today introduced breakthrough
Ethernet Cloud Fabric (ECF) technology based on Spectrum-2, the world’s
most advanced 100/200/400 Gb/s Ethernet switches. ECF technology
provides the ideal platform to quickly build and simply deploy state of
the art public and private cloud data centers with improved efficiency
and manageability. ECF combines three critical capabilities:

  • Industry-leading packet forwarding data plane
  • Agile, flexible and fully programmable data pipeline
  • Fully integrated, Open and Actionable telemetry to provide instant
    insights

ECF fully incorporates Ethernet Storage Fabric (ESF) technology that
seamlessly allows the network to serve as the ideal scale-out data plane
for computing, storage, artificial intelligence, and communications
traffic. ECF technology fully embraces Open Ethernet platforms that
disaggregate hardware and software, and Spectrum-2 based switches are
available with network operating systems including Mellanox Onyx,
Cumulus Linux, SONiC, and Linux SwitchDev.

Spectrum-2 switches with ECF enables data center architects to achieve
the highest levels of performance, flexibility and advanced
visualization capabilities to improve operational efficiency.

Industry-leading Packet Forwarding Data Plane

  • 8.33 Billion Packets per second – Fastest in its class
  • 42MB Monolithic and fully shared packet buffer to provide high
    bandwidth and low-latency cut-through performance
  • Robust RoCE Datapath to enable hardware accelerated data movement for
    Ethernet Storage Fabric and Machine Learning applications
  • Half a million flexible forwarding entries to support large Layer-2
    and Layer-3 networks
  • Up to 2 Million routes with external memory to address Internet
    Peering use cases
  • 128-way ECMP with support for flowlet based Adaptive Routing
  • Hardware-based Network Address Translation
  • 500K+ Access Control List entries for micro-segmentation and cloud
    scale whitelist policies
  • 500K+ VXLAN Tunnels, 10K+ VXLAN VTEPs to provide caveat-free Network
    Virtualization

Agile, flexible and fully programmable data pipeline

  • Comprehensive support for VXLAN overlays including single pass VXLAN
    routing and bridging
  • Centralized VXLAN routing for brown field environments
  • Support for other overlay protocols including EVPN, VXLAN-GPE,
    MPLS-over-GRE/UDP, NSH, NVGRE, MPLS/IPv6 based Segment routing and more
  • Future-proofing with programmable pipeline that can support new,
    custom and emerging protocols
  • Uncompromising performance with hardware optimized stages that
    accelerate traditional as well as virtualized network functions
  • Advanced modular data plane and integrated container support enables
    extensibility and flexibility to add customized and application
    specific capabilities

Fully Integrated, Open and Actionable Telemetry

  • 10X reduction in mean time to resolution by providing a rich set of
    contextual and actionable Layer 1-4 “What Just Happened” telemetry
    insights
  • Hardware based packet buffer tracking and data summarization using
    histograms
  • More than 500K flow tracking counters
  • Open and Extensible platform to facilitate integration and
    customization with 3rd party and open source visualization
    tools
  • Support for traditional visibility tools including sFlow, Streaming
    and In-band telemetry

Spectrum-2 extends the capabilities of the first generation of Spectrum
based Ethernet switches, which are deployed in thousands of data centers
around the world. Spectrum enables IT managers to achieve leading
performance and efficiency for 10GbE infrastructures and higher, and to
effectively and economically migrate from 10 to 25, 50, and 100 Gb/s
speeds. Spectrum capabilities are highlighted in a Tolly test report
which demonstrates superior performance versus competitor products.
Spectrum-2 maintains the same API as Spectrum: Open SDK/SAI API or Linux
upstream driver (Switchdev) and supports a range of network operating
systems.

“The Spectrum-2 switch ASIC operates at speeds up to 400 Gigabit
Ethernet, but goes beyond just raw performance by delivering the most
advanced features of any switch in its class without compromising
operation ability and simplicity,” said Amir Prescher, senior vice
president of end user sales and business development at Mellanox
Technologies, “Spectrum-2 enables a new era of Ethernet Cloud Fabrics
designed to increase business continuity by delivering the most advanced
visibility capabilities to detect and eliminate data center outages.
This state-of-the-art visibility technology is combined with fair and
predictable performance unmatched in the industry, which guarantees
consistent application level performance, which in turn drives
predictable business results for our customers. Spectrum-2 is at the
heart a new family of SN3000 switches that come in leaf, spine, and
super-spine form factors.”

“Hewlett Packard Enterprise M-series Ethernet switches allow our
customers to support more apps, more users and more locations with
higher performance and lower latency while reducing cost, space and
power,” said Marty Lans, General Manager, Storage Connectivity & HPE
Complete at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “The demand for bandwidth is
constantly increasing as companies adopt HCI and NVMe-OF. Spectrum-2
gives them a high-performance Ethernet storage fabric with the
industry’s highest throughput and comprehensive visibility.”

“Mellanox is a long-term trusted partner of Cumulus, and we’re excited
to partner with them once again to enable customers with Linux-based
environments to build an agile, high performance and highly-automated
infrastructure,” said Josh Leslie, CEO of Cumulus Networks. “Spectrum-2
will be able to run a massive spine complete with features – twice as
fast as before – and will enable twice as many breakouts. As the best,
most deployed, and most strategic software stack, Cumulus Linux and the
second generation of Spectrum will be an important piece on the
chessboard in the quest for data center dominance.”

“Data Center customers are looking to significantly increase the
Ethernet switch bandwidth in their networks while simultaneously raising
the requirements for overlay-based network agility and fully-integrated
visibility,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group.
“25 GbE and 100 GbE adoption continues to accelerate outside of the
large Cloud Service Providers. We predict 25 and 100 GbE combined sales
to rise 50% over the next two years. Spectrum-2 addresses this
transition.”

The Mellanox SN3000 family of Ethernet switches are built on the
Spectrum-2 switch ASIC to provide 1GbE through 400GbE Ethernet
connectivity, and enable a rich set of enhanced capabilities. These
advanced features along with increased flexibility and port density
enables a variety of switch platforms optimized for cloud, Hyperscale,
Enterprise data center, big data, artificial intelligence, financial,
storage workloads and more.

Spectrum-2’s innovative design and flexible data path allows IT managers
to fully optimize their network for business specific workloads to
maximize their data center return on investment. Additionally,
Spectrum-2 delivers unmatched power efficiency when compared to
alternative offerings, improving data center total cost of ownership.

Availability: The Spectrum-2 based SN3000 family of switch
systems with ECF technology will be available in Q3.

Supporting Resources:

About Mellanox

Mellanox Technologies (NASDAQ: MLNX)
is a leading supplier of end-to-end Ethernet and InfiniBand smart
interconnect solutions and services for servers and storage. Mellanox
interconnect solutions increase data center efficiency by providing the
highest throughput and lowest latency, delivering data faster to
applications, unlocking system performance and improving data security.
Mellanox offers a choice of fast interconnect products: adapters,
switches, software and silicon that accelerate application performance
and maximize business results for a wide range of markets including
cloud and hyperscale, high performance computing, artificial
intelligence, enterprise data centers, cyber security, storage,
financial services and more. More information is available at: http://www.mellanox.com

Note: Mellanox is a registered trademark of Mellanox Technologies,
Ltd. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.