Product and Pricing Announcements
1 October 2008

New series of Myri-10G NICs based on the Lanai-Z8ES chip,
lower power, even faster, two network ports,
PCIe single-root IO virtualization, and more.
Same proven software as earlier Myri-10G NICs.

Myri-10G PCI Express NIC with two SFP+ ports (product code 10G-PCIE-8BL-2S )

The new series of Myri-10G "8B" NICs is based on the Lanai-Z8ES chip, a direct descendant of the Lanai-Z8E chip used in the very successful series of Myri-10G "8A" NICs. The Lanai Z8ES improves on the Lanai Z8E by integrating the high-speed SRAM within the chip, by adding a second 10Gb/s network port for failover, by operating at a higher clock rate and at lower power, by supporting PCI Express Single-Root IO Virtualization (SR-IOV), and with many other improvements.

The Lanai-Z8ES chip is packaged in a 25mm square flip-chip BGA (FCBGA) package, and has a power consumption of only 2.4W typical at a 364.6MHz clock rate, 21.5% faster than the 300MHz clock rate of the Lanai-Z8E chip. In addition to a RISC processor and 2MB of high-speed SRAM, the Lanai Z8ES contains a set of packet engines that handle the packet payloads at wire rate. Firmware executing on the RISC processes the packet headers, and controls the actions of the packet engines.

The two network ports on the Lanai Z8ES are XAUI, per IEEE 802.3ae, for which there are many merchant-silicon chips for translating to other 10-Gigabit Ethernet PHYs. You may be able to identify in the photo above the two "SerDes" chips that translate between the XAUI ports of the Lanai Z8ES and the 10.3125 GBaud SFI signaling required by the SFP+ transceivers. Like all Myri-10G network-interface products, the network ports of the Lanai Z8ES support either 10Gb Ethernet or 10Gb Myrinet protocols at the Data Link level. The integrated PCI Express interface is x8 (8 lanes), and is PCIe 2.0 compliant (2.5 GT/s only). PCIe data-transfer rates with all leading PCIe chipsets are greater than 12Gb/s unidirectional and 22 Gb/s bidirectional (see this tabulation).

Myricom software distributions for Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and VMware ESX already support NICs based on the Lanai Z8ES. For Ethernet operation, firmware implements all important stateless TCP/IP and UDP/IP offloads. Optional software distributions may be used for low-latency, low-host-CPU-utilization, kernel-bypass operation for High Performance Computing, Video, or other demanding applications.

Myricom is using this versatile, low-power, Lanai-Z8ES chip initially for new network-interface products with two ports. Due to the popularity of SFP+, the 10G-PCIE-8B-2S NIC with two SFP+ ports is the first in the list of new NICs being introduced. SFP+ can be used in general-networking and storage applications with transceivers for 10GBase-SR and 10GBase-LR over serial fiber, with SFP+-terminated twinax cables, and with SFP+-terminated EOE (Electrical-Optical-Electrical) cables. (See this Guide to Myri-10G PHYs (pdf).) The typical power consumption of the 10G-PCIE-8B-2S NIC with SFP+ transceivers in both sockets and carrying traffic is only 6 Watts.

Myricom is introducing this Myri-10G NIC with two SFP+ ports at a list price with the Ethernet software bundle of $795 (without transceivers), the same as the previous list price of the popular one-port 10G-PCIE-8A-S NIC. The list price of the 10G-PCIE-8A-S NIC with the Ethernet software bundle has now been reduced to $695.

Watch for an announcement soon of two new Lanai-Z8ES-based High Speed Expansion Cards (HSECs) for the IBM BladeCenter H. The low power and small size of the Lanai Z8ES is a particular advantage in blade systems. One of the new HSECs will have two ports for failover. The other new HSEC will use two Lanai Z8ES chips, and will be capable of near-wire-rate throughput over two ports (nearly 20 Gb/s total). These new HSEC products will replace the current 10G-PCIE-8A-I HSEC.

Price reductions for one-port NICs. Thanks to the favorable effects of product volume, reduced component costs, and being well out on the manufacturing learning curve, Myricom is reducing the list prices of the one-port NICs in the Lanai-Z8E-based "8A" series by $100. As noted in this Guide to Myri-10G PHYs (pdf), Myri-10G components are best classified by the type of port connector. Here are the old and new list prices for NICs with the Ethernet (+E) software bundle:

Price reductions for SFP+ transceivers. Suppliers of SFP+ transceivers are experiencing a steep growth in volume and are reducing prices to their high-volume customers. Thus, Myricom is able to reduce our list prices for SFP+ transceivers as follows:

SFP+ versus XFP. At these prices for SFP+ transceivers, 10GBase-SR over multimode serial fiber is becoming an ever greater value. Due to the superiority in power consumption and cost of SFP+ over the earlier XFP transceivers, the smaller size, and the high and growing demand Myricom sees for SFP+ components, it is unlikely that Myricom will introduce any "8B" NICs with XFP ports.

Afterword on Myri-10G fiber options. 10-Gigabit Ethernet is today experiencing a steep growth in volume as it is reaching some maturity in its PHYs, led by 10GBase-SR with SFP+ transceivers over serial multimode fiber. Major players such as Cisco are basing their newest products on SFP+ (see this Cisco web page), and innovative young 10GbE switch companies such as Arastra are strongly emphasizing SFP+. In addition to being the smallest 10-Gigabit Ethernet form factor, SFP+ has the advantage of alternative cabling such as SFP+-terminated twinax copper cables and EOE cables (see the Guide to Myri-10G PHYs (pdf)). However, 10-Gigabit Ethernet is still far from being a "commodity," either for NICs or switches.

Meanwhile, 10-Gigabit Myrinet is moving away from the use of CX4 copper cables to the use of switch and NIC components with "QP" (QSFP, Quad Small Form factor Pluggable) ports connected by QSFP-terminated EOE cables. For lengths of 5m or less, one may alternatively use low-cost QSFP-terminated copper cables. EOE (Electrical-Optical-Electrical) cables are a technology that is already cost-effective, and promises to become more so. These EOE cables are now the preferred interconnect for 10-Gigabit Myrinet clusters and for switch-to-switch links for Myri-10G switch networks with more than 512 host ports. Although EOE cables are somewhat more expensive than copper CX4 cables, the Myri-10G products with "QP" ports are correspondingly less expensive than products with CX4 ports. In addition, QSFP-terminated EOE cables consume only ~1W for each cable end, and have negligible latency in the transceivers in the cable ends. The only latency is ~5ns per meter for the flight time of signals in the fiber.

Updated: 30 November 2008