The BCM5708C provides a fully integrated Layer 4 and Layer 5
solution - TCP/IP, RDMA and iSCSI 1.0/iSER along with a complete 10/
100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 802.3 compliant Media
Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer Transceiver solution for high
performance network applications. By itself, the BCM5708C provides a
complete single-chip Gigabit Ethernet NIC with a TCP/IP Offload
Engine, RDMA NIC (RNIC), iSCSI 1.0/iSER HBA or LOM solution.
The BCM5708C is different from other network controllers because it
can process the TCP/IP and relevant L5 protocols on data directly from
the application buffers on the host, therefore relieving the host CPU from
these time-consuming operations. On the receive path, the BCM5708C
processes the frame up to the highest layer supported present in it, e.g.,
the BCM5708C processes the frame for RDMA when the frame is an
RDMA frame.
With the appropriate configuration, the BCM5708C can simultaneously
support any two of the following three functions:
? RDMA Network Interface Controller (RNIC)
? iSCSI or iSER Host Bus Adapter
? TOE Chimney-enabled network accelerator