Solarflare
Server
Adapter
User
Guide
Introduction
Issue
20
©
Solarflare
Communications
2017
3
TX
PIO
Transmit
Programmed
input/output
is
the
direct
transfer
of
data
to
the
adapter
without
CPU
involvement.
As
an
alternative
to
the
usual
bus
master
DMA
method,
TX
PIO
improves
latency
and
is
especially
useful
for
smaller
packets.
Multicast
Replication
Received
multicast
packets
are
replicated
in
hardware
and
delivered
to
multiple
receive
queues.
Sideband
management
NCSI
RMII
interface
for
base
board
management
integration.
SMBus
interface
for
legacy
base
board
management
integration.
PCI
Single
‐
Root
‐
IOV,
SR
‐
IOV,
capable
16
Physical
functions
and
up
to
240
Virtual
functions
per
adapter.
Flexible
deployment
of
1024
channels
between
Virtual
and
Physical
Functions.
Support
Alternate
Routing
ID
(ARI).
SR
‐
IOV
is
not
supported
for
Solarflare
adapters
on
IBM
System
p
servers.
10
Gigabit
Ethernet
Supports
the
ability
to
design
a
cost
effective,
high
performance
10
Gigabit
Ethernet
solution.
Receive
Side
Scaling
(RSS)
IPv4
and
IPv6
RSS
raises
the
utilization
levels
of
multi
‐
core
servers
dramatically
by
distributing
I/O
load
across
all
CPUs
and
cores.
Stateless
offloads
Through
the
addition
of
hardware
based
TCP
segmentation
and
reassembly
offloads,
VLAN,
VxLAN,
NVGRE
and
GENEVE
offloads.
Jumbo
frame
support
Support
for
up
to
9216
byte
jumbo
frames.
MSI
‐
X
support
2048
MSI
‐
X
interrupt
support
enables
higher
levels
of
performance.
Can
also
work
with
MSI
or
legacy
line
based
interrupts.
Ultra
low
latency
Cut
through
architecture.
<
7µs
end
to
end
latency
with
standard
kernel
drivers,
<
3µs
with
Onload
drivers.