NetXen, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, released its third generation NX3031 silicon and Intelligent NIC boards for volume blade and rack server platforms migrating to 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE). NetXen NX3031 chips and boards are specifically designed to address both current and future go-to-market needs of volume server OEMs. The company has previously announced HP and IBM as major customers.
NetXen said its NetXen's NX3031-based Intelligent NICs deliver a quantum leap in network I/O performance. According to a new Tolly Group Up to Spec Certified test, NetXen achieves 22 Gbps of bi-directional throughput and greater than 14 Gbps receive throughput for 1500-byte packets. This represents a near doubling of previous industry benchmarks. 
By using a 25-cent connector and a small riser card that incorporates the customer's choice of physical layer interface, servers can be ready for the transition from Gigabit to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The solution enables server OEMs to commit 10 Gigabit Ethernet to the motherboard without worrying about a specific connectivity variant, such as SPF+, CX4 or the emerging 10GBASE-T. This "above-board" connectivity option future-proofs their servers while removing risk for both the OEM and the end user.
"Our third-generation Intelligent NIC solutions harness the power of the FlexLOM architecture to provide server OEMs and board manufacturers with an effortless, affordable and high-volume transition from Gigabit to 10 Gigabit Ethernet," said Govind Kizhepat, CEO and founder, NetXen.
Key features of NetXen's third-generation Intelligent NICs include:
- Programmability that allows features to be added over time via firmware upgrades
- Performance with the 2x bandwidth gains provided by PCIe 2.0
- Energy efficiency through Dynamic Power Management, a capability that can reduce power consumption by up to 40%
- New levels of SLA enforcement for virtualized environments via NetXen's Quality of Virtualization (QoV) features, including SR-IOV, NetQueue, rate limiting and bandwidth allocation control
- A single chip solution supporting full offload of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) that will continue to drive storage and network convergence.
NetXen is now shipping its third-generation NX3031 Intelligent NIC solution, which is the foundation for its new series of intelligent network adapters:
- NX3-20GxR: Dual-port 10GbE low-profile PCI Express 2.0 cards with pluggable SFP+ optical interconnect modules
- NX3-20GCU: Dual-port 10GbE low-profile PCI Express 2.0 card with direct attach twinax copper wiring for in-rack connectivity
- NX3-4GBT: Low-profile PCI Express 2.0 card with four Gigabit Ethernet ports for maximum flexibility in mixed 1G/10G environments.
