Host CPU Offload Adapters?
In a recent blog, we talked about the term “SmartNIC”and its prevalence in common discussions about FPGA-based adapters. SmartNIC is a great marketing term because it piggybacks off the overall “smart revolution” that encompasses phones, watches, houses etc.
However, the more descriptive (but admittedly boring) term for Accolade ANIC cards is “host CPU offload adapters.” In fact, we often refer interchangeably to ANIC cards as SmartNICs or host CPU offload adapters. The latter clearly doesn’t role off the tongue, but gets at the essence of what the adapter does.
The purpose of ANIC adapters is to remove or offload the burden of repetitive, packet processing functions from the appliance’s host CPU. In other words, free up the host CPU to deal with high value functions and not mundane tasks which are better left to an FPGA. Examples of these repetitive, packet processing functions are timestamping, flow shunting, deduplication, packet filtering, and flow classification.
Accolade Technology offers a complete line of host CPU offload adapters from 1G all the way up to 2-ports of 100G. For a complete review of all ANIC adapter features please below.