This two-port NIC appears to the host operating system as two independent PCI Express devices, one for each network port. Two ports are provided not only for failover, but also for performance. The two devices can carry TCP/IP traffic concurrently at an aggregate data rate of 19.8 Gb/s with a 9KB MTU, or 18.9 Gb/s with a 1500B MTU. These initial netperf 2.4.3 tests were performed between pre-release Intel Nehalem hosts running the RHEL5 kernel 2.6.18-92.el5. Performance will vary with the host and operating system.

A PCI Express switch chip on the NIC connects the host port to two Lanai-Z8ES PCI Express endpoints via two PCI Express x8 "Gen1" (2.5 GT/s) links. The Myricom Lanai-Z8ES chip is a low-power, programmable, 10Gb / PCI Express x8 controller used in all of Myricom's latest series of Myri-10G NICs. The "Gen2" (5 GT/s) PCI Express x8 host port exchanges data with the host computer at 32 Gbits/s in each direction, full-duplex. The ~25 Gbits/s available after PCI Express protocol overhead is a good match to two full-speed 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The software support for these high-performance, two-port NICs is the same as for other Myri-10G interface products, and the network ports support either 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit Myrinet depending on the software distribution used. With the Myri10GE software distribution for conventional Ethernet operation, firmware executing in the Lanai-Z8ES chips implements all of the important stateless TCP/IP and UDP/IP offloads to allow wire-speed 10-Gigabit Ethernet throughput at low host-CPU load. With the MX-10G software distribution for low-latency, low-host-CPU-load operation over either Ethernet or Myrinet networks, the firmware implements the kernel-bypass functions of the MX message-passing system. Other optional software distributions are available for specialized demanding applications including UDP streaming of IPTV video and 10Gb Ethernet packet capture. Software distributions are available for Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and VMware ESX.

The 10G-PCIE2-8B2-2S NIC is a low-profile (half-height) PCI Express add-in card available with either a standard or a low-profile PCI faceplate. The NIC consumes 14.7 Watts typical including power for two SFP+ transceivers for 10GBase-SR or 10GBase-LR over serial fiber. The ports may also be used with SFP+-terminated "Direct Attach" twinax copper cables. See the specification page for additional details.

The initial list price of the 10G-PCIE2-8B2-2S NIC with the Ethernet software bundle is $995.