Direct Memory Access (DMA)

Advanced FPGA-based Host CPU Offload

After all packet processing concludes, an ANIC adapter efficiently transfers all relevant packets and associated packet descriptors (metadata) across the PCIe bus directly in to host memory for consumption by the host application.

The main advantage of DMA is the host CPU is not burdened with memory transfer and hence is available to perform other more important tasks.

Multi-core DMA

Multi-core DMA is a technique that makes processing by multiple host CPU cores more efficient. For example, assume the host Intel CPU has 4 cores (up to 64 cores are supported) with each operating independently of the other 3 cores. The ANIC adapter is programmed to write data in to 4 independent host packet buffers (HPB)  and each CPU core (and related application thread) is in turn programmed to process only its corresponding HPB. In this way a network security or monitoring application can take advantage of parallel processing of data thus achieving higher levels of speed and efficiency.

PF_RING

PF_RING is an open source, Linux kernel module for packet capture that is supported by most open source IPS/IDS solutions such as Snort, Suricata, and Bro as well as other applications such as Wireshark and Argus. PF_RING has native support for Accolade ANIC adapters which makes integration with any application that uses PF_RING seamless.

wdt_ID Speed 1G 10G 10G 10G 10G/40G 10G/40G 100G 100G 100G
1 Model 4Ku 20ku 40ku 40kq 80ku ATLAS-1100 Service Node ANIC-200KFlex ANIC-100Kq ANIC-200Kq
2 Port/Type 4X1G SFP 2X10G SFP+ 4X10G SFP+ 1X40G QSFP+ 4X10G SFP+ 2X40G QSFP+ 8X10G SFP+ 4x10G SFP+ 1x40G QSFP+ 2x100G QSFP28 2x40G QSFP28 1X100G QSFP28 2X100G QSFP28
3 PCIe Interface Gen3 x8 Gen3 x8 Gen3 x8 Gen3 x8 Gen3 x8 Gen3 x8 Gen3 x16 Gen3 x16 Gen3 x16
4 Dimensions(H x L inches) 4.25 x 6.5   4.25 x 6.25 4.25 x 6.25 4.25 x 6.25 4.25 x 6.25 1.75 x12.28x14 4.25 x 6.5 4.25 x 10.5 4.25 x 10.5
5 Memory 32MB 4G 4G 4G 4G 16/32G 8G 12G 12G
6 Timestamp 5.7 nS 5.7 nS 5.7 nS 5.7 nS 5.7 nS 5.7 nS 4 nS 4 nS 4 nS
7 100% Packet
Capture
8 Gigamon, AristaTimestamp
9 Packet Merging
10 Packet Parsing