Introduction

Features

The Intel X722 controller is optimized for data center, cloud, and mobile applications and includes the following features:

• VXLAN, NVGRE and GENEVE Hardware Offloads: These stateless offloads preserve application performance for overlay networks. With these offloads, it is possible to distribute network traffic across CPU cores. At the same time, the controller offloads LSO, GSO, and checksum from the host software, which reduces CPU overhead.
• Low latency: Intel Ethernet Flow Director delivers hardware-based application steering and Intel Data Direct I/O makes the processor cache the primary destination and source of I/O data rather than main memory.
• Virtualization performance: With Intel Virtualization Technology (VT), the controller delivers outstanding I/O performance in virtualized server environments. The controller reduces I/O bottlenecks by providing intelligent offloads for networking traffic per virtual machine (VM), which enables near-line rate speeds for small packets and supports almost an unlimited amount of isolated traffic flows so that you can scale your cloud environment.
• Next-generation VMDq: The controller support up to 128 VMDq VMs and offer enhanced Quality of Service (QoS) feature by providing weighted round-robin servicing for the Tx data. The controller offloads the data-sorting functionality from the hypervisor to the network silicon, which improves data throughput and CPU usage.
• SR-IOV implementation: Provides an implementation of the PCI-SIG standard for I/O Virtualization. The physical configuration of each port is divided into multiple virtual ports. Each virtual port is assigned to an individual VM directly by bypassing the virtual switch in the Hypervisor, which results in near-native performance.
• iWarp RDMA support implements kernel bypass and direct data placement and allows for more efficient high-speed networking by eliminating queues and network related interrupts
• VM load balancing: Provides traffic load balancing (Tx and Rx) across VMs that are bound to the team interface. It also provides fault tolerance of a switch, port, or cable.
• Auto-detect (PnP) feature for the LOM adapters, enabling you to change LOM adapters (eg from a 1Gb LOM to 10 Gb LOM) and the network interface will automatically reconfigure during the boot process

Specifications

The Intel Ethernet Connection X722 has the following specifications:

• Host interface:
  • PCI Power Management/ACPI Extensions
  • TLP Processing Hint (TPH) Support
  • MSI-X Support - up to 1168 MSI-X vectors
• Virtualization features:
  • Microsoft Network Virtualization that uses Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE)
  • VMware Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN)
  • GENEVE support
  • Intel Virtual Technology (VT) with VMDq for virtualization
  • VMware NetQueue and Microsoft VMQ support
  • VEB enhancement
  • SR-IOV support - 4 physical functions, 128 virtual functions
  • Virtual Bridging Support: VEPA/802.1Qbg
  • iWarp RDMA support

  Note: These virtualization features are only supported at 10 Gbps speeds

• Management features:
  • Advanced filtering capabilities (IPv4, IPv6)
  • SNMP
  • RMON statistic counters
  • Wake on LAN support (first port only)
  • NC-SI for XClarity Controller (XCC) shared management port connectivity only through port 1
  • Intel PROSet Utility for easy configuration and management
• Additional features:
  • IPv4 and IPv6 support
  • Jumbo Frame Support: 9728 bytes
  • VLAN support
  • Flow Control
  • 1588 Time Synchronization Support
  • Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) support
• TCP/IP Layer 2 features:
  • Receive Side Scaling (RSS)
  • Large Send Offload (LSO)
  • TCP/UDP/IP/SCTP Checksum Offload
  • IPv4, IPv6
  • Supports iSCSI as an iSCSI software initiator

• Teaming support:

  • 10Gb LOM adapters support teaming with the X710 and other 10Gb adapters
  • 1Gb LOM adapters support teaming with the I350 and other 1Gb adapters
  • Adapter Fault Tolerance (AFT)
  • Switch Fault Tolerance (SFT)
  • Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB)
  • VM Load Balancing (VMLB)
  • IEEE 802.3ad (link aggregation control protocol)

  Note: Teaming is not vendor specific

• IEEE 802.1Q VLAN support with VLAN tag insertion, with stripping and packet filtering for up to 4096 VLAN tags.
• IEEE 802.3x flow control support
• IEEE 802.1p Class of Service (CoS)/QoS

  Note: QoS is only supported at 10 Gbps speeds

• Support for Advanced Packet Filtering
• UEFI and legacy PXE boot