ThinkSystem Xilinx Alveo U25 25GbE SFP28 2-Port PCIe FPGA AdapterProduct Guide

The ThinkSystem Xilinx Alveo U25 25GbE SFP28 2-Port PCIe FPGA Adapter is an advanced programmable network adapter enabling customized hardware acceleration and offload. The U25 programming model supports both high-level network programming abstractions such as HLS and P4, as well compute acceleration frameworks such as Vitis to enable both Xilinx and third-party accelerated applications.

The following figure shows the ThinkSystem Xilinx Alveo U25 25GbE SFP28 2-Port PCIe FPGA Adapter.

Figure 1. ThinkSystem Xilinx Alveo U25 25GbE SFP28 2-Port PCIe FPGA Adapter

In addition to standard NIC drivers, the U25 adapter also supports Onload kernel bypass to provide both TCP and packet-based APIs for network application acceleration. The Xilinx Onload software accelerates and scales network-intensive applications such as in-memory databases, software load balancers, and web servers. With Onload, data centers can support 400% or more users on their cloud network while delivering improved reliability, enhanced quality of service (QoS) and higher return on investment, without modification to existing applications.

The following table shows the part number for the adapter.

The part numbers include the following:

• One Xilinx adapter
• Low-profile (2U) and full-height (3U) adapter brackets
• Documentation

This section lists the supported transceivers and cables.

The following table lists the supported fiber optic cables and Active Optical Cables.

The Xilinx Alveo U25 25GbE SFP28 2-Port PCIe FPGA Adapter offers a number of features, including the following:

A Powerful SmartNIC

The U25 delivers ultra-high throughput, small packet performance and low-latency. The host interface supports standard NIC drivers as well as Onload kernel bypass to provide both TCP and packet-based APIs for network application acceleration. IEEE1588v2 precision timing protocol (PTP) is provided for applications that require synchronized time stamping of packets with single-digit nanosecond accuracy.

A Programmable Fabric

The U25 SmartNIC contains a programmable FPGA handling all network flows. Each flow can be individually delivered to the host and/or streamed in hardware to through bump-in-the-wire network acceleration functions and/or compute acceleration kernels for application processing within the FPGA.

A Platform for Hardware Accelerated Clouds

Cloud service providers are deploying SmartNIC fabrics to achieve virtual switching and micro- segmentation of services that scale linearly with CPU cores and network links.

The adapter has the following specifications:

• Adapter Hardware
  • XtremeScale™ Ethernet Controller
  • Zynq® UltraScale+™ XCU25 FPGA
  • 2x PCIe Gen 3 x8 (x16 connector in bifurcated mode)
  • 2x 10/25 GbE SFP28 cages supporting DAC cables or optical transceivers
  • 1x 2GB x 40 DDR4-2400
  • 1x 4GB x 72 DDR4-2400
• Acceleration
  • SDx Compute Acceleration
  • Universal Kernel Bypass
  • DPDK Poll Mode Driver - Packet (Cloud, Telco)
  • Onload® – TCP (Cloud, Telco, Enterprise)
  • Onload®/ TCPDirect - TCP/UDP (Fintech)
• Security
  • Tamper resistant adapter – Digitally signed firmware
• Time Synchronization and Hardware Timestamping
  • Hardware timestamping for all packets
  • On-board Stratum 3 stable oscillator
  • Solarflare Software PTP Daemon delivers enhanced stability and clock synchronization accuracy and can be used to synchronize the adapter clock to external time source
• Stateless Offloads
  • TCP/UDP Checksum Offload (CSO) TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) Giant Send Offload (GSO)
  • Large Send Offload (LSO) Large Receive Offload (LRO) Receive Side Scaling (RSS)
  • Receive Segment Coalescing (RSC)
• Manageability and Remote Boot
  • PXE and UEFI
  • NC-SI over MCTP SMBus
  • PLDM over MCTP SMBus MCTP PCIe VDM
  • Management and Utilities
  • Solarflare Boot Manager
• Traffic Engineering
  • XtremePacket™ Engine for parsing, filtering, and flow steering
  • TCP/UDP/IP, MAC, VLAN, RSS filtering Accelerated Receive Flow Steering (ARFS) Transmit Packet Steering
• Virtualization
  • Linux Multiqueue
  • SR-IOV: 16 physical functions; 240 virtual functions 2048 Guest OS protected vNICs
  • VXLAN, tunneling offload; adaptable to custom overlays.
  • VLAN and VLAN Q-in-Q Insertion/Stripping
• Ethernet Standards
  • IEEE802.3-2018 Ethernet Base Standard
  • IEEE 802.3by Ethernet consortium 25 Gigabit Ethernet
  • IEEE 802.3ad, 802.1AX Link Aggregation
  • IEEE 802.1Q, 802.1P VLAN Tags and Priority IEEE 1588-2008 PTPv2
  • Jumbo Frame support (9000 bytes)

The following tables list the ThinkSystem servers that are compatible.

The adapter supports the operating systems listed in the following table.

The adapter has the following hardware certifications:

• FCC 47 CFR Part 15 Class A
• UL 94-/V
• CE Mark
• RoHS - Complies with EU directive 2011/65/EU

The adapter has the following physical specifications:

• Length: 168 mm (6.6 inches)
• Width: 64 mm (2.54 inches)

The adapter is supported in the following environment:

• Temperature:
  • Operating: 0°C to 55°C (32°F to 131°F)
  • Storage: -40°C to 65°C (-40°F to 149°F)
• Humidity:
  • Operating: 10% to 80%
  • Storage: 5% to 90%

One year limited warranty. When installed in a Lenovo server, this adapter assumes the server’s base warranty and any warranty upgrades.

For more information, refer to these documents:

• Networking Options for ThinkSystem Servers:
  https://lenovopress.com/lp0765-networking-options-for-thinksystem-servers
• ServerProven compatibility
  http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/serverproven
• Alveo U25 SmartNIC Accelerator Card product page
  https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/alveo/u25.html