ABIT puts security on the motherboard

[R. A. Hettinga]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/28940.html

  20 January 2003
  Updated: 19:24 GMT

The Register

ABIT puts security on the motherboard
By John Leyden
Posted: 20/01/2003 at 16:07 GMT

ABIT today launched server motherboards featuring integrated security
processors, with a promise to slash the cost of building security
appliances.

The Taiwanese manufacturer's SI-1N Pentium 4 processor-based server
motherboard comes with Cavium Network's NITROX Security Macro Processor,
designed to gear their deployment towards security applications, such as
VPN gateways, Integrated Firewall/ VPNs, SSL Webservers, and SSL VPNs. It
hopes to sell these security-enhanced motherboards to security appliance
OEMs.

Syed Ali, president and chief executive of Cavium Networks, told us
integrating its programmable network processors rather than using add-on
boards or running security software on standard servers can reduce product
cost for OEMs while increasing performance and flexibility.

Quite how much this will result in lowered costs to end-users is so far
unclear but Cavium reckons adding security processors only increases mobo
manufacturing prices by around 10 per cent, so the savings could be very
substantial.

Cavium's NITROX processor family can switch between IPsec, SSL processing
(key for the deployment of increasing popular SSL-based VPNs fro the likes
of Aventail) or handle both protocols at the same time with a simple
software change.

According to Cavium, the NITROX Lite CN1005 processor integrated onto
ABIT's SI-1N server motherboard can process up to 400Mbps of IPsec traffic
or 3,500 RSA operations per second.

In a statement , ABIT said it believed over time security will become a
standard feature in server motherboards for PC based security appliances.

ABIT's product plans include multi-processor server motherboards with
multiple Gigabit Ethernet controllers and Cavium's NITROX CN1120 processor.
The NITROX CN1120 can process up to 1Gbps of IPsec traffic or 14,000 RSA
operations per second.

Silicon-valley start up Cavium, whose clients include Array Networks as
well as ASUS, competes with the likes of Broadcom and Hifn in the growing
security co-processor market. ®

Bootnote
In diver parlance, Nitrox is a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen with a higher
percentage of Oxygen than found in atmospheric air. It's not the same as
the compound Nitrous Oxide (aka laughing gas).

Divers use Nitrox mixes in preference to compressed air because it helps
prevent nitrogen narcosis, the dangerous intoxicated condition caused when
nitrogen dissolves in the blood.

Another advantage of high-O2 Nitrox mixes is reduced susceptibility to
decompression sickness (the bends) due to a lower level of nitrogen
absorbed during a dive.

As readers point out, Oxygen itself becomes toxic at higher partial
pressures hence divers use helium oxygen mixes at greater depths.

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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