Linux 5.9 To Support New EF100 NIC Architecture Developed By Xilinx

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.9 To Support New EF100 NIC Architecture Developed By Xilinx

One of the new network drivers now queued up for Linux 5.9 is the SFC EF100 driver for the EF100 NIC architecture...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SFC-EF100-For-Linux-5.9

[zxy_thf]

Good to know, I was always thinking Xilinx only makes FPGAs.
Nice to see we have one more choice.

[herman]

I remember when 100 referred to Megabits, not Gigabits. Time flies.

[jabl]

Turns out xilinx acquired solarflare last year: https://www.servethehome.com/xilinx-...-capabilities/

[Brane215]

Good to know, I was always thinking Xilinx only makes FPGAs.
Nice to see we have one more choice.

This is IP block for their FPGA.

[starshipeleven]

This is IP block for their FPGA.

The best way to sell FPGAs, making product lines of other stuff using your own FPGAs as processor.

[CommunityMember]

This is IP block for their FPGA.

While in the vary early days of FPGAs basically all you got was the chip and some basic design software, Xilinx (along with the alternatives (and yes, there are more than just Altera (Intel) even if Xilinix and Altera between them have something like 90% market share) have been selling IP cores for a long long time to make it easier to implement the common functional units. Having every company re-implement the (for example) PCIe bus core simply means that the developments take a lot longer for little value add (the IP tends to be priced aggressively to, as others said, encourage you to use their FPGA). There are also 3rd party FPGA core sources, and even the OpenCores project for free cores.

[Brane215]

While in the vary early days of FPGAs basically all you got was the chip and some basic design software, Xilinx (along with the alternatives (and yes, there are more than just Altera (Intel) even if Xilinix and Altera between them have something like 90% market share) have been selling IP cores for a long long time to make it easier to implement the common functional units. Having every company re-implement the (for example) PCIe bus core simply means that the developments take a lot longer for little value add (the IP tends to be priced aggressively to, as others said, encourage you to use their FPGA). There are also 3rd party FPGA core sources, and even the OpenCores project for free cores.

I know that.
He made it sound like this was a new NIC chip or something totally outside of FPGA world.