Kontron Dualport 10 gigabit ethernet XMC mezzanine card for copper networks

The Kontron dual-port 10 gigabit XMC402 mezzanine card can be used by OEMs and system operators to upgrade their communication structures quickly and cost-efficiently to 10 gigabit bandwidth. The card features the 10 gigabit Intel ethernet controller X540 and incorporates two copper interfaces. Existing infrastructures with common CAT6+ cables are sufficient to establish 10 gigabit interconnects. With the modular approach, OEMs can increase the bandwidth of existing installations by simply adding the XMC402 mezzanine card, without having to replace existing CompactPCI, VME and VPX boards. The card enables users to cope with the increased bandwidth of Internet of Things, cloud connection, M2M and virtualisation integrated in their communication, transportation, military and industrial automation applications.

The card delivers high transfer rates and efficient data throughput, as it unburdens the CPU by using intelligent mechanisms, such as: Checksum Offload, TCP Segmentation Offload and reduced interrupt operations. Host boards that feature the 3rd generation Intel Core processor and integrate the PCI-Express controller in the processor again profit from additional bandwidth and low latency: with Intel Data Direct I/O technology, the Kontron XMC402 can communicate directly with the processor cache bypassing the system memory. This helps avoid unnecessary memory transactions. This frees host processor boards of I/O bottlenecks and, in the most varied application scenarios, good data transfer performance comparable with server-level performance can be achieved. Another advantage is that no compromises have to be made in terms of size, weight and power (SWaP) as for the small footprint and low, average power consumption of 7.5 W, even mobile applications usually have enough reserves.

By supporting the Intel Virtualization Technology for Connectivity (VT-c) including on-chip QoS and traffic management, flexible port partitioning as well as Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq), the card optimises the bandwidth demands of even the most complex virtualisation solutions for current multicore and multiprocessor installations. And with support for storage over ethernet via iSCSI, FCoE and NFS, it fulfils the need for high-performance, distributed storage solutions. With backwards compatibility to 1 gigabit installations and the intelligent operating modus, which - depending on the connected infrastructure - automatically switches from 1GbE or 10GbE, the card reduces the need for configuration while increasing reliability even in heterogeneous network environments.

The Kontron Dualport 10 Gigabit XMC402 is available with the current Windows operating systems as well as Linux and VxWorks.