Marketing description

The Intel Ethernet 10 Gigabit Converged Network Adapter X520-DA2 enables data center transformation by delivering a reliable, unified 10GbE network connection. Advanced platform scalability features include: Receive Side Coalescing, Intel Ethernet Flow Director, and support for PCI Express Gen2. Intel VT-c delivers industry-leading I/O virtualization capabilities, including support for Single Route I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) and Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq). The Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X520 provides advanced unified networking capabilities, including support for iSCSI, NFS, and FCoE.

Key selling points

• SFP+ connectivity
• Low-profile
• Load balancing on multiple CPUs
• ISCSI remote boot support
• Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) support
• Intel Direct Cache Access (DCA)
• MSI-X support
• Low latency interrupts
• Header splits and replication in receive
• IPsec offload
• Virtual Machine Load Balancing (VLMB)
• Watchdog timer

Product features

• Low-profile
  Enables higher bandwidth and throughput from standard and low-profile PCIe slots and servers.
• Load balancing on multiple CPUs
  Increases performance on multi-processor systems by efficiently balance CPU cores when used with Receive-Side Scaling (RSS) from Microsoft or scalable I/O on Linux.
• ISCSI remote boot support
  Provides centralized storage area network (SAN) management at a lower cost than other iSCSI solutions.
• Intel Direct Cache Access (DCA)
  Enables the adapter to pre-fetch the data from memory, avoiding cache misses and improving application response time.
• MSI-X support
  Minimizes the overhead of interrupts. Load-balancing of interrupt handling between multiple cores/CPUs.
• Low latency interrupts
  Based on the sensitivity of the incoming data, the adapter can bypass the automatic moderation of time intervals between the interrupts.
• Header splits and replication in receive
  Helps the driver focus on the relevant part of the packet without the need to parse it.
• IPsec offload
  Offloads IPsec capability onto the adapter instead of the software to significantly improve I/O throughput and CPU usage.
• Virtual Machine Load Balancing (VLMB)
  Virtual Machines Load Balancing (VMLB) provides traffic load balancing across virtual switch, port, cable, or adapter failure.
• Watchdog timer
  Gives an indication to the manageability firmware or external devices that the chip or the driver is not functioning.