Intel Corp. announced today that it is licensing technology from Lucent Technologies that will increase the efficiency of networks. As part of the agreement, Intel will undertake additional development, testing, and manufacturing of the Lucent TA1000 controller. Intel will also incorporate the Transport Offload Engine
(TOE) technology within the TA1000 controller into its future Gigabit Ethernet and networked storage adapters. Lucent will use the Intel-manufactured TA1000 product in its networking products.
TOE technology processes the many layers of network protocols, such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Internet Protocol, and Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), required with data transport. Off-loading these protocols enables wire-speed performance and frees up the primary host processor to focus on other applications, explain company representatives.
TOE technology is particularly important to enterprise and telecommunications service providers deploying Gigabit Ethernet technologies and storage area networks. These deployments require vast amounts of information to be transmitted across fiber-optic and copper-based networks. The result of using TOE technology is faster access to stored data and lower networking costs.
"We believe that the combination of Lucent's and Intel's unique expertise will dramatically change the landscape of today's enterprise networks," contends Tim Sullivan, president, Lucent Technologies Optical Networking Group. "Using technology such as TOE opens the door to allow enterprises deploying networked storage to harness the abundance of optical bandwidth now available from telecommunications service providers."
"Enterprises deploying Gigabit Ethernet local area networks and networked storage today often need to add extra processing capabilities to maintain high levels of performance across their networks," adds Jim Johnson, vice president of the Intel Communications Group and general manager of Intel's Platform Networking Group. "The TOE technology provides capabilities that will help enable enterprises to deploy lower cost, higher performance network storage."
In addition to manufacturing a product utilizing TOE technology for use in future adapters, Intel will conduct interoperability testing, develop software, and provide support to simplify integrating the TOE engine into products.
Lucent will use the TOE technology in its own products, including the recently released Packet over SONET (POS) OptiStar e.OC48c/STM16c Network Adapter and OptiStar e.OC12c/STM4c Network Adapter. These IP packet over SONET/SDH network adapters allow direct connectivity from standard servers using a PCI Bus (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and Windows 2000 are supported) to the optical network. The OptiStar products support both network monitoring applications and deployment of lightwave services in high performance environments.
For more information on the OptiStar line of products visit the Lucent Technologies' (Murray Hill, NJ) Web site at www.lucent.com/products/optistareseries.
Additional information about Intel Corp. (Hillsboro, OR), can be found on the company's Web site at www.intel.com.