Portwell Announces the Market’s First OCP NIC 3.0 “Bypass” Network Card APTNC Series

Delivering OCP NIC 3.0 network cards with bypass function to enable network continuity


APTNC Series


FREMONT, CALIF. — October 17th, 2023 — American Portwell Technology, Inc., (https://www.portwell.com), a world-leading innovator for network appliance solutions, and a Titanium Partner of Intel® Partner Alliance and an Open Compute Project (OCP) Community Level Tiered Member, announces APTNC series of OCP NIC 3.0 Bypass Network Cards. According to Robert Feng, American Portwell’s senior product marketing director, Portwell is the first manufacturer to release OCP NIC 3.0-based network interface card solutions with bypass function.

“Portwell APTNC series offers the first ever OCP NIC 3.0 cards with network bypass function to the market,” states Feng. “The cards adopt an event-driven architecture that allows the flexibility to define the LAN bypass behavior of each bypass segment, which means that the LAN Bypass MCU will perform the specified action for each of the platform events.” According to Feng, using the Portwell LAN Bypass library and software APIs, applications running on the host system can access the LAN Bypass microcontroller by the user.

Portwell’s APTNC series includes four models at the time of this announcement, with more in planning and under development for a dynamic roadmap to meet the demand from the ever-evolving network applications.

APTNC-OX2R-BP
Portwell OCP NIC 3.0 network adapter with 2x 10GbE copper ports and network bypass function

  • An OCP Inspired™ product formally reviewed by the OCP Foundation to meet an approved OCP Specification and adhere to the OCP Tenets of Impact, Efficiency, Scale, Openness and Sustainability
  • Compliant with OCP NIC 3.0 SFF (Small Form Factor) standard
  • Intel® Ethernet Controller X710-AT2
  • 2x 10GbE RJ45 ports
  • 1 pair of network bypass segment
  • Dimension: 76 mm (W) x 115 mm (D) x 11.50 mm (H) *OCP NIC 3.0 SFF (Small Form Factor)

APTNC-OX4S-BP
Portwell network adapter with 4x 10GbE SFP+ ports and network bypass function

  • Portwell proprietary design based on OCP NIC 3.0 specification with extended depth and height of OCP NIC 3.0 SFF physical form factor
  • Intel® Ethernet Controller XL710-BM1
  • 4x 10GbE SFP+ ports
  • 2 pairs of network bypass segments
  • Dimension: 76 mm (W) x 166 mm (D) x 22.60 mm (H) *Portwell proprietary Extended Tall OCP NIC 3.0 SFF (ETSFF)
  • Available in two models: APTNC-OX4SS-BP (Short Range) and APTNC-OX4SL- BP (Long Range)

APTNC-O24R-BP
Portwell network adapter with 4x 2.5GbE copper ports and network bypass function

  • Portwell proprietary design based on OCP NIC 3.0 specification with extended depth of OCP NIC 3.0 SFF physical form factor
  • ntel® Ethernet Controller I225-LM
  • 4x 2.5GbE RJ45 ports
  • 2 pairs of network bypass segments
  • Dimension: 76 mm (W) x 166 mm (D) x 11.50 mm (H) *Portwell proprietary Extended OCP NIC 3.0 SFF (ESFF)

“All four APTNC network adapters are designed with Intel Ethernet controllers, delivering energy efficiency, seamless interoperability, optimized load balancing, and enhanced agility through Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) drivers,” states Orion Xu, American Portwell’s product manager. “They are the perfect choice for next-generation firewalls, unified threat management (UTM) solutions, network routers, gateways, and software- defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN), ensuring superior performance and reliability.” And Xu continues on to highlight, “the Portwell APTNC network adapters indeed offer a comprehensive feature set, making them a critical component for modern network infrastructure.”


Compact, High Port Density and Easily Serviceable

  • Easily Serviceable Design: Featuring a convenient thumbscrew pull-tab faceplate design to eliminate the need to open the system chassis, simplifying maintenance and upgrades.
  • Compact, plus High Port Density: Despite their compact form factor, these network adapters are configured with high port density to optimize connectivity options.
  • Open Standard Compatibility: Expanding network capabilities beyond the PCIe form factor.
  • Variety of Innovative Form Factors: The Portwell APTNC series encompasses APTNC-OX2R-BP which is compliant with OCP NIC 3.0 SFF (76 (W) x 115 (D) x 11.50 (H) mm); the APTNC-OX4S-BP that is designed with extended depth and height upon OCP NIC 3.0; and the APTNC-O24R-BP, which is designed with extended depth upon OCP NIC 3.0 SFF. These Portwell ETSFF (Extended Tall Small Form Factor) and ESFF (Extended Small Form Factor) proprietary cards accommodate Portwell’s APTNS series of network appliances, such as APTNS- 13180 and APTNS-13181.


Built-in Fail-Safe Bypass to Ensure Network Continuity
In addition, the APTNC series helps maintain network connection and business continuity with its built-in network bypass function, including:

  • Fail-Safe Network Connectivity: Ensuring continuous network operations and reliability.
  • Optimized Uptime: In the event of, for example, power outages, software hang, maintenance interruptions, or network infrastructure expansion, the network bypass function helps ensure optimized uptime, prevents data loss, and enhances network visibility and monitoring capabilities.
  • Network Security, Resilience, and Threat Prevention: In the case of an IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) failure or instability, the APTNC network adapters provide a configurable bypass mode to activate failover or fail-safe capabilities, offering the flexibility to bypass the device to keep the network running, or redirecting traffic to a redundant link.


Leading Innovation in OCP NIC 3.0 Network Cards
First of its kind, the Portwell APTNC network adapters, designed with optimized reliability, usability, serviceability, and cost-effective built-in bypass function, are the ultimate solution for those seeking an open standard approach to ensure business continuity. These adapters offer unparalleled availability and performance, making them an ideal choice for enabling today’s dynamically modern networks into the next-gen design and deployments.
“It will empower networking design migration planning,” Feng confirms, “from proprietary solutions to OCP concept-based solutions. What’s more, the OCP 3.0 spec, plus bypass feature, delivers fail-safe, continuous networking as well as empowering more control for network administrators. And, as ever,” he continues, “our customers can not only benefit from the most up-to-date technology and features, but they also gain peace of mind from the long product life span inherent with every Portwell product.”
Last but not least, to help accelerate time-to-deployment for the dynamic and ever- evolving network applications, Portwell has designed and developed the APTNS network security appliance series to effectively integrate with these APTNC series of OCP NIC 3.0 bypass network adapters, such as the Intel® Xeon® D-2700 processor based APTNS-13181 to configure with three APTNC cards, and APTNS-13180, featuring Intel Xeon D-1700 processors, to configure with one and up to two (in development) APTNC cards.



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Product details:
APTNC-OX2R-BP OCP NIC 3.0 SFF Network Adapter with 2x 10GbE Copper Ports & Bypass Function:
https://portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=APTNC-OX2R-BP
APTNC-OX4S-BP OCP NIC 3.0 based Network Adapter with 4x 10GbE SFP+ & Bypass Function:
https://portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=APTNC-OX4S-BP
APTNC-O24R-BP OCP NIC 3.0 based Network Adapter with 4x 2.5GbE Copper Ports & Bypass Function:
https://portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=APTNC-O24R-BP
APTNS-13181 1U Network Appliance with Intel Xeon D-2700 Series SoC Featuring 3x OCP NIC 3.0 Slots and BMC:
https://portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=APTNS-13181
APTNS-13180 1U Network Appliance with Intel Xeon D-1700 Series SoC Featuring one OCP NIC 3.0 Slot:
https://portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=APTNS-13180



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About American Portwell Technology
American Portwell Technology, Inc., is a world-leading innovator in the embedded computing market and a Titanium Partner of the Intel Partner Alliance. American Portwell Technology designs, manufactures and markets a complete range of PICMG computer boards, embedded computer boards and systems, rackmount systems and network communication appliances for both OEMs and ODMs. American Portwell is an ISO 9001, ISO 13485, ISO 14001 and TL 9000 certified company. The company is located in Fremont, California. For more information about American Portwell’s extensive turnkey solutions and private-label branding service, call 1-877-APT-8899, email info@portwell.com or visit us at https://www.portwell.com.

Intel and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other products and company names referred to herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or mark holders.



Product Contact
Orion Xu
Product Manager
American Portwell Technology, Inc.
+1 510-403-3374
orionx@portwell.com

Media Contact
Vicky Lo
American Portwell Technology, Inc.
+1 510-403-3354
vicky.lo@portwell.com

American Portwell Technology
E-mail: info@portwell.com
Phone: +1 510-403-3399
WEB: https://www.portwell.com