Adaptec ASA-7211C
The 7211C is a PCI-X adapter for iSCSI and sports both a TCP/IP and an iSCSI offload engine. A Marvell chip handles the physical connection to the network itself, at speeds up to 1 GBit/s. The adapter uses a 64-bit interface that can operate at up to 66 MHz - more than enough for its intended purpose.
When examining this card, the large number of memory modules immediately catch the eye; SDRAM chips can be found even on its back. All this memory is required by the buffers for the individual offloading functions, which speeds up processing immensely.
TOPICS