Integrating an ANIC Adapter
A common question we get is: How do I integrate an ANIC adapter into my appliance and with my host application?
The answer is fairly straightforward. The ANIC adapter or SmartNIC itself utilizes a standard PCIe slot so is compatible with any industry-standard Intel server. The adapters vary in size but as long as you have a full length PCIe slot available there is no problem accommodating any ANIC adapter from Gigabit Ethernet all the way up to 100 Gigabit.
As for the host application (i.e. security or network monitoring), it must be able to communicate with the adapter via a well-defined API. The API is documented and provided as a software development kit (SDK) with various procedures to manipulate the adapter such as for setup, defining an action, or reading data from the adapter. The good news is that once a host application has been modified to interact with any Accolade adapter (e.g. 10G) then the exact same API calls can be used to interface with adapters of different speeds such as 1G, 40G or 100G. Customers often begin by utilizing a single adapter line and then over time offer appliances with adapters of all speeds.
I should note that if your application uses PF_RING or is Suricata-based then there are adapter interface options that don’t require direct use of the Accolade API.
For more information contact us at support@accoladetechnology.com.