- Netronome
-
Netronome is a privately held fabless semiconductor company specializing in the design of network flow processors used for intelligent flow processing in network and communications devices, such as switches, routers and cyber security applications. Netronome’s areas of interest include network flow processors and acceleration cards that scale from 10 to 200 Gbps. They are used in carrier-grade and enterprise‐class communications products that require deep packet inspection, flow analysis, content processing, virtualization and security. Netronome’s products are developed in labs in Santa Clara, CA, Boxborough, MA and Pittsburgh, PA.
Contents
History
Netronome was founded in 2003 by Niel Viljoen, David Wells and Johann Tönsing, who had all previously worked for Marconi. Niel Viljoen served as Chief Technology Officer at Marconi, having been General Manager at Fore Systems, acquired by Marconi for $4.6 billion in 1999, and is currently Netronome’s Chief Development Officer. Viljoen served as the CEO and president of Netronome from 2003 until 2011. As a 25 year technology veteran, Viljoen’s primary areas of focus include IP, ATM, security and system design. Before becoming involved with Netronome on a full-time basis in July 2003, Viljoen was an active business angel, investing in, amongst others, Nujira, Intune and Azuro. He serves on the board of Nujira and previously sat on the board of Intune.
David Wells served as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of the wireless division at Marconi and now serves as Netronome’s vice president of technology and general manager of EMEA. Johann Tönsing was a distinguished engineer at Marconi and is currently chief architect and senior vice president of software engineering at Netronome.[1]
In February 2011, Netronome announced Howard Bubb as Chief Executive Officer who brings more than 20 years of experience in leading growth for a number of semiconductor and communications companies including Dialogic and Intel’s Communications Infrastructure Group. Bubb most recently served as chairman and chief executive officer of fabless semiconductor company Ambric until its acquisition by Nethra in 2009. [2]
Licensing
In November 2007, Netronome announced a technology licensing and sales and marketing agreement with Intel Corporation focused on the extension of the Intel IXP28XX product line of network processors. Under the terms of the agreement, Netronome is developing a next-generation line of IXP-compatible, high-end network processors that combine the Intel IXP28XX technology with Netronome’s architecture. [3]
In March 2010, Netronome announced it began shipping the Network Flow Processor (NFP–3240), specifically designed for tight coupling with x86 architectures. [4]
Products
Network Flow Processors
A Network Flow Processor (NFP) is capable of providing a stateful high-speed programmable data-plane with integrated deep packet inspection, security and I/O virtualization. NFPs are used in servers, appliances and network elements in the enterprise and carrier networks that make up these designs. In addition, NFPs deliver high performance flows and session-based processing that is user and application aware. NFPs integrate unmatched intelligence, security and virtualization for millions of simultaneous voice, video and data network flows. [5]
Network Flow Engines
Netronome’s Network Flow Engines (NFE-32xx) are the industry’s highest performance PCI Express acceleration cards, providing line-rate programmable L2-L7 packet and flow processing. Designed to enable the acceleration of network and security applications, the NFE family utilizes numerous techniques to dramatically improve network I/O workloads, including packet classification, stateful flow analysis, deep packet inspection, integrated security processing and dynamic load balancing of flows to multiple x86 CPU cores. [6]
Network Flow Processing Platforms
Purpose-built for network and security applications requiring line-rate throughput, Netronome's Flow Processing Platforms (NFPP) deliver up to 200 Gbps of programmable L2-L7 networking in 1U/2U form factors. The NFPP couples multicore x86 processors with NFE-3240 acceleration cards for workload-optimized packet, flow, security and application processing to dramatically increase network performance.
SSL Inspector
The Netronome SSL Inspector provides existing security appliances, such as intrusion detection and prevention systems, forensics and data loss, with access to the decrypted plaintext of SSL flows. This equips network appliance manufacturers with a mechanism to maintain multi-gigabit, line-rate network performance with full visibility. The Netronome SSL Inspector is the first transparent SSL proxy that provides assurance that common threats, such as spam, spyware and viruses, data theft and other forms of cyber crime, are identified inside SSL flows. [7]
References
External links
Categories:- Fabless semiconductor companies
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
