Intel Unveils High-Performance, Power-Efficient Ethernet Solutions

[AleksandarK]

Intel today launched two new Ethernet product lines - the Intel Ethernet E830 Controllers and Network Adapters, and the Intel Ethernet E610 Controllers and Network Adapters - designed to meet the growing demands of enterprise, telecommunications, cloud, edge, high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. These next-generation solutions provide robust, high-performance connectivity while enhancing energy efficiency and security, and lowering total cost of ownership (TCO).

"In today's interconnected world, networking is essential to the success of business and technology transformation. With the launch of the Intel Ethernet E830 and E610 products, we are helping customers meet the growing demand for high-performance, energy-efficient solutions that optimize network infrastructures, lower operational costs and enhance TCO." -Bob Ghaffari, Intel vice president, Network and Edge Group




By combining Intel's cutting-edge Xeon 6 processors with high-performance Ethernet connectivity, Intel's new Ethernet solutions lay the foundation for scalable, data-intensive applications, enabling businesses to accelerate innovation, reduce costs and gain a competitive edge. With the latest advancements in process node and Ethernet technology, the E830 and E610 families deliver significant advances in performance per watt and robust security for both data center and edge environments.

Why It Matters: Ethernet technology continues to serve as the cornerstone of modern network infrastructures. As AI, virtual radio access networks (vRAN), 5G cloud computing, edge and Internet of Things (IoT) applications drive growth in data and connectivity needs, Intel's Ethernet solutions are engineered to provide the performance, scalability and security essential to meet these evolving needs.

What They Offer: The Intel Ethernet E830 Controllers and Network Adapters are optimized for high-density virtualized workloads, offering flexible port configurations, advanced time synchronization capabilities and superior security features. The Intel Ethernet E610 Controllers and Network Adapters provide an ideal solution for control plane operations, with advanced manageability features and exceptional power efficiency.

Intel Ethernet E830 Family: High Performance and Versatile Connectivity

The Intel Ethernet E830 family offers high-performant, secure and efficient solutions designed for demanding workloads in virtualized enterprise, cloud, telecom and edge environments. The first availability includes dual-port 25GbE PCIe and OCP 3.0-compliant adapters, with additional configurations coming later this year. Key features of the E830 family include:

• High-Speed Performance: Supporting speeds up to 200GbE on the PCIe 5.0 bus, the Intel Ethernet E830 products deliver twice the bandwidth of previous generations, enabling faster data transfers and improved application responsiveness.
• Flexible Port Options: With configurations including 1x200GbE, 2x100/50/25/10GbE and 8x25/10GbE, Ethernet E830 products allow businesses to tailor their network infrastructure to meet specific performance and cost requirements.
• Advanced Timing Capabilities: Features like precision time measurement (PTM), 1588 PTP, SyncE and GNSS support are essential for critical time synchronization applications in telecom, financial services and AI training/inferencing.
• Enhanced Security: Built with Intel's security technologies such as Secure Boot, Secure Firmware Upgrade and dual hardware roots of trust, the E830 family offers protection against future threats with post-quantum crypto (PQC) solutions compliant with CNSA 1.0 and FIPS 140-3 Level 1.
• Investment Protection: Software and driver compatibility with Intel Ethernet E810 products makes upgrades easier, providing seamless transition and life cycle management.

Intel Ethernet E610 Family: Efficient, Secure, and Manageable Networking
The Intel Ethernet E610 family brings a compelling combination of manageability, power efficiency and security to control plane networking. Available in a variety of speeds and form factors, E610 products provide:

• Modern Connectivity: Supporting 10GBASE-T, 5G, 2.5G and 1000BASE-T technologies, E610 products deliver efficient, high-performance connectivity for data center control planes, workstation and edge applications.
• Comprehensive Manageability: Featuring Secure Security Protocol and Data Model (SPDM), Platform Level Data Model (PLDM), Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) pass-through and NC-SI support, the E610 family simplifies network operations and reduces administrative overhead.
• Unmatched Power Efficiency: Consuming up to 50% less power than previous generations, E610 products help reduce operational costs while minimizing environmental impact.
• Robust Security: The E610 family includes hardware root of trust for secure firmware updates and modern cryptographic security features compliant with CNSA 1.0 for maximum network integrity and protection against cyberthreats.
• Seamless Upgradability: Compatibility with prior-generation 10GBASE-T adapters makes upgrades easy, ensuring customers can maximize their existing environments.

About Intel's Proven Partner Ecosystem: As a global leader in Ethernet technology, Intel has fostered a broad ecosystem of partners, including Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Supermicro. This open ecosystem ensures that Intel Ethernet solutions are deployed across a wide variety of applications, offering customers unparalleled flexibility and choice in their networking deployments.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[ncrs]

A lot of refreshes with no new products for Intel recently...
This E830 is just a refreshed E810. The 200gbps mode is nothing new, it bifurcates two ports just like on E810-2CQDA2. Meanwhile Mellanox (NVIDIA) is shipping 800gbps ConnectX-8 with 1600gbps already announced. I hope they at least worked on some E810 limitations like barely functional eSwitch switchdev mode.
Same with the new Xeon E, Xeon 6300 series which is just renamed Raptor Lake.

 

[Tigerfox]

As I understand it, some E830 variations will use PCIe5.0 and be able to offer proper 200GbE on one QSFP-Port (QSFP56?) without bifurcation. But you are right, the solutions presented now just seem to be a more modern, more energy efficient update of existing E810.

E610 is interesting just because they still manage to lower power consumption on 10GBase-T, by 50% even. It's PCIe4.0x4 now, which seems to be overkill, atleast for 2x10GBase-T. There is only one OCP-adapter offering 4x10GBase-T. You can of course, plug the NIC into a slot that only supports x1 or x2 and still will have enough bandwith, which you wouldn't have with X550.
I would like if E610 supports SFP+, too, because there are plenty of affordable, modern 10GbE/2.5GbE-hybrid-switches that use SFP+ instead of RJ45 for 10GbE and thus enable you to lower powerconsumption and latency drastically.

 

[Alan Smithee]

In the "50% lower power" statement if they're referring to the X710-T2L that would make the E610 2-port 10Gbase-T about 4.8W which is competitive with Marvell Aquantia.

AFAIK no vendor makes a dual Aquantia card anymore, so the E610-T2L (presumed model #) would be the only PCIe 4.0 dual 10GBase-T NIC on the market.

610 is lower than 710 so it makes you wonder if it's actually positioned lower than the 710, and if so, what they left out.

There was no mention in the PR of iWARP/RDMA for either E610 or E830.

 

[thestryker6]

Guessing these are mostly process node shrinks and potentially minor feature adds. It is nice that Intel will have a PCIe 4.0 10Gb controller now and I'm curious what the pricing will end up being.

710/610 dual port controller comparison: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/compare.html?productIds=189534,236437