RSA: Intel reference design to accelerate SASE, other security tasks

Intel has launched a reference design it says can allow accelerator playing cards for safety workloads together with safe entry service edge (SASE), IPsec, and SSL/TLS.

The upside of the server playing cards can be offloading some utility processing from CPUs, successfully rising server efficiency with out requiring extra server rack area, in response to Intel.

The announcement was made at RSA Convention 2022, and particulars had been printed in a weblog put up by Bob Ghaffardi, Intel vp and common supervisor of the Enterprise and Cloud Division.

With the Intel NetSec Accelerator Reference Design, third-party producers can construct PCI Specific (PCIe)-based playing cards that includes Intel QuickAssist Expertise acceleration and Intel-based server performance, together with orchestration and administration.

Intel says it has a number of companions presently creating merchandise based mostly on the reference design, and two displayed them at RSA: Silicom confirmed its AONIC Card, and F5 confirmed a safety utility operating on {hardware} based mostly on the design.

“We created the design to assist edge community and safety resolution suppliers rapidly construct, deploy, and scale networking and safety features inside SASE stacks with out including rack area,” Ghaffardi wrote. “This reference design permits a PCIe add-in card to ship the capabilities of a server inside a small, power-efficient bundle. Distributors can combine SASE features on this card to maximise the capabilities of their server infrastructure on the edge.”

At coronary heart of the cardboard is an Intel Atom processor together with an Intel Ethernet Community Adapter E810. Collectively, the 2 chips present low-latency networking and safety whereas offloading the processing from the CPU. The cardboard can speed up processor-intensive makes use of corresponding to IPsec, SSL/TLS, firewall, SASE and analytics workloads, in response to Ghaffardi’s weblog.

As a result of the design relies on Intel Structure, builders can port x86 functions to the cardboard, operating them with little to no change required. Its assist for SASE permits software-defined wide-area community (SD-WAN) and safety functionalities to be converged into virtualized or containerized companies.

Intel stated it expects playing cards constructed on the design to be delivered in a normal format that matches current PCIe slots inside host servers, and so they gained’t require extra area to appreciate extra performance and efficiency.