Alacritech last week introduced a 10 Gigabit Ethernet server adapter that offloads processing from the host computer.

Available in both copper and fiber-optic versions, the PCIe adapters (what Alacritech calls "accelerators") offer the ability to offload TCP processing. Alacritech says they also control power and cooling costs, since the adapters work more efficiently than general-purpose processors.

By offloading the TCP handling from the server's main processor to the adapter, that frees up the processor to concentrate on applications rather than on communications. Alacritech says its adapters are built to be efficient movers of data, with maximum throughput and minimum latency, and they can enable the servers to support more clients.

Alacritech says its technology is best suited for large block-size data movement, such as that associated with backup, media streaming, video-on-demand and so forth. However, it also helps with movements of smaller blocks, such as those of e-mail and file servers.

The Dynamic TCP Offload in the adapters is integrated with Microsoft's TCP Chimney Offload architecture, supporting Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. Alacritech says that when the next major release of Windows 2008 is available, it will provide Dynamic TCP Offload support for Microsoft's Hyper-V. Meanwhile, stateless offload is supported via Linux, OpenSolaris, Windows and Mac OS X, and VMware ESX will be supported next year.

The optical version of the new adapter will begin shipping in the first quarter of 2009, and the copper version will ship later in 2009, according to Alacritech. Prices start at $1,300.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.