Solarflare Communications, the leader in 10 Gigabit Ethernet
(10GbE), today announced it has been granted four patents by the United
States Patent and Trade Office (USPTO). These patents cement the
company’s leadership in virtualization by enabling hardware-assisted,
scalable virtualization techniques. This technology enables
organizations to develop solutions that can achieve line-rate
performance in Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere cloud computing
environments by supporting direct access of the virtual machines to the
adapter hardware.
The four new patents include:
- DMA descriptor queue read and cache write pointer arrangement
(US Patent 7496699). This invention enables implementation of a
highly-scalable descriptor caching engine for virtualized Ethernet
devices. - Transmit completion event batching (US Patent
7562366), which enables a high-performance notification mechanism for
virtualized Ethernet devices. - Queue depth management (US Patent
7610413). This design innovation creates an interface for
high-performance synchronization of virtualized Ethernet devices. - Rate pacing (US Patent 7596644), which enables hard QoS provisioning at Layer 2/3/4 for virtualized Ethernet devices.
Because of its strong accelerated virtualization performance and
patented architecture, the Solarflare Solarstorm SFN4112F 10GbE
server adapteris the leading
for cloud networking. This is demonstrated by Cloudsoft’s selection of
the Solarflare adapter in recent benchmark testing of Monterey,
Cloudsoft’s enterprise-class cloud platform. Cloud environments in
particular benefit from high-performance virtualized networking because
of the need for a flexible, scalable infrastructure. With a fully
virtualized architecture, Solarflare’s controller delivers the
performance and scalability that cloud environments demand.
The test leveraged solutions from multiple vendor partners
including Solarflare, Citrix and Arista Networks, and yielded 18.5
Gigabits per second (Gbps) bi-directional line rate on a 10G physical
connection. Solarflare’s 10GbE server adapter leverages a hardware and
software architecture based on multiple patents, including the four new
US patents, which protect a family of inventions required for scalable,
hardware-assisted virtualization.
"Solarflare has demonstrated scalable, line-rate virtual
machine to virtual machine networking performance with both VMware’s
vSphere and Citrix XenServer 5.5," said Dr. Steve Pope, co-founder and
CTO of controllers at Solarflare Communications. "We are excited to see
the Solarstorm SFN4112F positioned to be the leading 10GbE server
adapter for cloud networking in enterprises due to its virtualization
design enhancements. We are also happy to see our inventions recognized
by the USPTO with the four newly-granted patents."
Solarflare continues to pursue state-of-the-art innovations to
increase its ability to sustain competitive advantage and increase
product differentiation in the market. Since 2001 to safeguard its
intellectual property and drive innovation in the industry, Solarflare
has filed more than 127 patent applications, of which 25 patents have
been issued.
