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Netronome is a supplier of computer networking products using SmartNICs and Ethernet technology. Netronome offers SmartNICs, software and silicon for markets including Telco, company data centers and cloud computing.

History
Netronome was founded by Niel Viljoen, David Wells and Johann Tönsing, in 2003, with the idea to develop programmable flow co-processing solutions that accelerate network and security processing in x86-based servers, virtualized and non virtualized.

In 2005, Netronome released its first generation of 4x1GbE SmartNICs based on Intel IXP28XX NPU and FPGA technologies. Also, released the industry’s first software-defined solution based on the Netronome Flow Manager (NFM).

Netronome licensed IXP NPU micro engine (ME) processor technology and associated software from Intel Corporation. Licensed ARM processor technology from ARM Holdings and integrated them with Netronome’s PCIe technology to develop the network flow processor (NFP) in 2007.

In 2008, Netronome establishes itself as a fabless semiconductor company with a dedicated silicon development team in Boxborough, Massachusetts. Then moved on to launch the NFP-3K line of networking coprocessor and enhanced performance by adding 10GbE and PCIe Gen2 support in 2009. Fundamentally changing the silicon architecture to enable easier programming using Run-to-Completion (RTC) model for programming networking datapaths.

Based on the NFP-3K, in 2011, Netronome introduced the second generation of 10GbE SmartNICs for accelerating x86-based servers and appliances. It also delivered turnkey software for security and networking applications.

In 2012 the Netronome software solutions evolved to include standards-based flow and SDN frameworks using OpenFlow and Open vSwitch (OVS). And in 2013, Netronome sold its SSL inspection application software technology to Blue Coat Systems, while retaining all of its silicon and core software intellectual property. It also established OEM customer relationship with Blue Coat supplying SmartNICs and associated software.

In 2013 Netronome introduced the third generation of 10/40/100GbE flow processing SmartNICs based on the NFP-6K, delivering enhanced turnkey Open vSwitch (OVS) and OpenFlow-based SDN gateway and security software applications, designed for x86-based network appliances.

The NFP-6K flow processors were also launched. Fundamental improvements in the NFP silicon architecture were made: adding 40GbE and 100GbE ports, 5X more processing cores, a distributed mesh switching fabric, multiple integrated PCIe Gen3 interfaces, increased multi-threading performance between processing, accelerator and memory elements in the silicon, and DRAM-based wild-card matching capability.

In 2015, Netronome demonstrated P4 and C based programming on its SmartNICs, allowing users to change the behavior of networking hardware in cloud-based SDN and NFV deployments at the speed at which one can change open source networking software in servers.

Netronome released the industry’s first P4 and C Integrated Development Environment (IDE), in 2016, to enable simple and vendor-agnostic datapath programming on the generally available SmartNICs. It also introduced its fourth generation of 10/40GbE SmartNICs, branded as SmartNICs, using the new NFP-4K and production ready Agilio OVS software. Another big announcement was the roadmap to support 25GbE, Contrail vRouter and Linux Firewall during the course of the year.

Today, Netronome collaborates and partners with Ericsson, Juniper Networks, Mirantis and Nuage Networks from Nokia, integrating the Agilio SmartNIC Platform on a wide range of NFV infrastructure solutions.

Manufacturing
Netronome is a fabless semiconductor company. The current generation of its chips are produced on Intel's 22-nm FinFET process.

Products
Netronome Agilio CX 10GbE, 25GbE and 40GbE standard low-profile PCIe SmartNICs are designed for general-purpose x86 commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) rack servers, fitting needed power and form factor requirements. The solutions come with fully qualified Agilio Software compliant with popular operating systems, enabling easy qualification and quick deployment by OEMs and end users.

Netronome Agilio LX 40 and 100GbE SmartNICs incorporate two PCIe Gen3 x8 interfaces, 8GB of low-latency DDR3 memory, and 96 highly threaded flow processing cores that run accelerated Linux, Open vSwitch and DPDK code. Efficient use of dual-PCIe with multi-threaded memory and hardware accelerator access enable significantly greater NUMA performance in multi-socket systems.

Netronome NFE-3240 Appliance Adapters are designed for networking and security appliances that require high-performance flow processing for network-port-to-network-port traffic. These PCIe adapters are ideal for use with x86-based appliances. Available in 2-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 6-port Gigabit Ethernet options, the NFE-3240 SmartNICs provide up to 20Gb/s of line-rate programmable packet and flow processing per card.

Agilio OVS Software, combined with Agilio SmartNICs, significantly improves server-based networking performance and restores valuable CPU cores by offloading Open vSwitch (OVS) and Linux networking functions to Netronome’s family of SmartNICs. The Agilio solution is a drop-in accelerator for OVS with seamless integration, making it compatible with existing network tools and controllers. This, combined with XVIO, now brings the same performance to Virtio-based VM workloads.

The Agilio OVS Firewall Software is designed to enable zero-trust stateful security in data centers using OpenStack-based automation. Agilio OVS Firewall Software, combined with Agilio SmartNICs, enable zero-trust stateful security while significantly improving server-based networking performance. Agilio OVS Firewall Software restores valuable CPU cores by offloading OVS and connection tracking (Conntrack) to Netronome’s SmartNICs.

Agilio vRouter software, combined with Agilio SmartNICs improves server-based networking performance and restores valuable CPU cores by offloading the Contrail vRouter datapath to Netronome’s SmartNICs. The solution improves the vRouter data plane performance for VNFs and VMs to 20-30Mpps which enables drastic improvements to cloud workloads performance as well as increases the network performance and efficiency by up to 5X. Netronome’s Agilio vRouter provides the ability for servers to scale up through increasing vRouter datapath performance while at the same time saves on the number of deployed servers increasing effective server output and decreasing data center TCO.

Awards

 * Layer123 Network Transformation Awards 2017 Best New Product
 * Network Products Guide IT World Awards 2017 Gold
 * Pipeline Innovation Awards 2017 Runner Up
 * Leading Lights Awards 2016 Best New Product Telecom
 * Internet Telephony Awards 2016 SDN Product of the Year
 * SDN Zone Awards 2014 Excellence in SDN