Intel stalks Freescale with Crystal Forest
Combines Xeon processor with specialized communications chipset to push x86 into the high end data plane
Published: 15 February, 2012
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Intel is boosting up its communications processor platform to go head-to-head with Freescale, Broadcom/NetLogic and Cavium. The giant has unveiled its next generation offering, Crystal Forest, making its own pitch to help carriers survive the deluge of data across wireless and wired IP networks.
It is important that the architectures for handling massive amounts of multimedia data are simplified, argues Intel, which says that manufacturers currently need to combine many
Crystal Forest promises to deliver up to 160m packets per second for Layer 3 packet forwarding, using Intel's QuickAssist technology, which processes and accelerates specialized packet workloads, to reach throughput levels which, according to the chip giant, were previously possible only with specialized processors.
Crystal Forest pairs a new generation Xeon processor with a companion chip called Cave Creek, which is now sampling. With this combination, Intel is moving x86 to a new level in the communications processing market, where it has made major inroads at control plane level. However, this pushes Xeon into the data plane, where the heavy duty processing takes place and where Freescale and others hold the fort.
The broader plan is to create a whole range of companion chips to take the x86 processors into new sectors previously addressed by specialized products. These new chips replace the elements specific to servers with those for comms, including hardware accelerators for cryptography and compression.
Next year is likely to see a Xeon-based platform with a companion chip targeted at digital signal processing in base stations, again hitting at a Freescale heartland, as well as at Texas Instruments. This is all part of a wider trend to use common architectures for more and more elements of the data network, to reduce costs and support standard programming methods.
Cave Creek will be in production before the end of the year targeting a wide range of communications processing products from firewalls to high end routers. It is optimized for use with the latest Sandy Bridge versions of Xeon but a low power combination is also possible, pairing it with notebook chips such as the Core i3, i5 and i7. Intel will also release a set of software libraries and algorithms called the Data Plane Development Kit to help accelerate use of the x86 in high end packet processing, promising a fivefold performance boost in that area.
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