The CASwell CAR-5060 rackmount appliance is based on two third generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Ice Lake) and a highly configurable network architecture that allows up to 64 high-speed Ethernet ports. It uses the manufacturer’s own designed network configuration with up to eight PCI Express connected, proprietary (NIN) modules that each provides a maximum of eight high-speed Ethernet ports for 64 network connections with up to 100 Gigabit/s depending on configuration. The system can also be equipped with different storage options and FPGA or GPU accelerators for higher performance in networking or artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.
The CAR-5060 is primarily targeted for unified threat management (UTM) but is also highly capable to support large-size data centers, communication or cloud service providers and enterprises with high internal networking workloads.
The CASwell CAR-5060 rackmount appliance is based on two 3rd Gen. Intel Xeon Scalable Processors that are optimized for cloud, enterprise, AI, HPC, network security and IOT workloads with up to 40 powerful cores and a wide range of frequency and power levels. The 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors deliver 1.5x more performance on a range of broadly-deployed network and 5G workloads over the prior generation. Specifically the N SKU processor models are designed to support diverse network environments and are optimized for many workloads and performance levels such as L3 forwarding, 5G UPF, OVS DPDK, VPP FIB router, web server/NGINX, vEPC, vBNG, and vCMTS. They offer higher performance on NFV and networking workloads at lower thermal design power. Built-In AI and crypto acceleration, enhanced security, PCI Express 4.0 support and increased memory options are additional reasons for using Intel’s latest generation of processors.
Versatile and multi-functional
The two 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors of the CASwell CAR-5060 can be combined with 16 DIMMs of DDR4-3200 for up to 512GB of ECC main memory. Two M.2 and one U.2 SlimSAS ports are available onboard for fast SSDs. For more storage there’s also a front-accessible, hot-swap-capable 3.5-inch SATA hard drive slot. Further storage options are available through eight front-loading modules. These are typically used for the manufacturer’s own designed network configuration with up to eight PCI Express connected, proprietary (NIN) modules that each provides a maximum of eight high-speed Ethernet ports for 64 network connections overall. But storage modules with either one or two 3.5″ or 2.5″ HDDs or SSDs are also available. Each network or storage module is connected to the processors by PCI Express 4.0 interface introduced with 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable platforms to provide extremely high bandwidth that is basically doubled compared to the previous PCIe 3.0 generation.
The CASwell CAR-5060 also features an internal PCI Express 4.0 x16 slot for a low-profile full-length adapter card. This offers the possibility of adding more Ethernet ports to the system but also can be used for FPGA or GPU acceleration PCIe cards to support emerging machine learning and deep learning workloads with the highest bandwidth and lowest latency.
Furthermore, instead of the networking and storage front modules of the CAR-5060, the PCI Express 4.0 slots can alternatively be used for up to four full-height, full-length and two low-profile PCI Express cards if needed for special purposes and when a limited number of network ports is sufficient.
Conclusion
Especially communication service providers, cloud service providers and enterprises with high internal networking workloads should benefit from using the CAR-5060. Network and security appliance companies can use the CAR-5060 as an upgraded next-generation unified threat management device.
