Software Defined Networking has transformed Data Center Networking in several profound ways. First, it has broken down traditional boundaries of where functionality exists across network elements. Second, it has vastly increased the functional richness and diversity of features available to data center operators. And third, it has made possible for the first time the development and deployment of new networking features at the speed of software.
But this transformation has also brought about massive technical challenges and unanswered questions. What is the most optimal way to partition networking functionality across switches, NICs, and Server CPUs? When and where does it make sense to apply acceleration techniques? What types of acceleration technologies provide the best performance while maintaining the flexibility and development agility required by SDN?
In case you haven’t noticed, many players in the networking industry have set out to tackle some of these difficult problems. This is creating a renaissance in domain specific networking architectures. In this session we will present Xilinx’s vision regarding this important new trend and explain how FPGA technology will play an important and critical role.