Intel continues its legacy of Ethernet leadership by introducing the next generation 10 Gb/s family of silicon to support the growing 10GBASE-T ecosystem.

The Intel® Ethernet Controller X550 family is the low cost single-chip 10GBASE-T controller of choice to broadly deploy 10 GbE in platform designs. Now with support for LAN, FCoE, and iSCSI traffic with added support for VXLAN and NVGRE - 10GBASE-T is the most flexible connectivity for all of your networking requirements. Innovation continues with Intel's second generation integrated 10GBASE-T MAC+PHY, which drives down both cost and power enabling the most cost effective deployment of 10 GbE in the data center. With 10GBASE-T, migration to 10 GbE is dramatically simplified with backward compatibility with your existing GbE network infrastructure.

10GBASE-T Simplifies the Transition from 1 GbE to 10 GbE

The X550 controller provides up to two integrated 10GBASE-T PHYs providing 10 Gb/s of throughput that are also backwards compatible with legacy GbE switches and Cat6A cabling. The ability to auto-negotiate between 100 Mb/s, 1 GbE, and 10 GbE speeds provide the backwards compatibility for a smooth transition and easy migration to 10 GbE.

In addition, the X550 controller also supports NBASE-T* technology. NBASE-T technology can increase network speeds of 2.5 Gb/s or 5 Gb/s using existing CAT 5e/CAT 6 cables at lengths up to 100 m.

Intel's NBASE-T technology can be firmware upgraded to support the emerging IEEE 802.3bz specification.

Exciting New Data Center Models

More than just a 10 times per-port increase in performance by using the X550 controller versus a standard 1 GbE controller opens doors for exciting new usage models, including unified networking, I/O virtualization, and flexible port partitioning.

A Complete Unified Network Solution

Converging data and storage onto one fabric eliminates the need for multiple adapters and cables per server. Furthermore, 10 GbE provides the bandwidth to converge these multiple fabrics into a single wire. A key capability that makes all this possible is traffic class separation provided by DCB. DCB provides a collection of standards for additional QoS functionality such as lossless delivery, congestion notification, prioritybased flow control, and priority groups. This enables the Intel X550 to provide a one-wire solution with virtual pipes for the different classes of traffic:

• Data: best effort delivery of standard LAN traffic.
• Storage: NAS or SAN including lossless FCoE and iSCSI.
• Management: Guaranteed connectivity of data center IP management

• Open architecture integrates networking with the server, enabling IT managers to reduce complexity and overhead while enabling a flexible and scalable data center network.
• Intelligent offloads lower cost and power while delivering the application performance that customers expect.
• Proven unified networking is built on trusted Intel Ethernet technology, enabling customers to deploy FCoE or iSCSI with the same quality used in their traditional Ethernet network.