The BCM5709C provides a dual-port, fully integrated Layer 4 and Layer 5 solution – TCP/IP, RDMA, and iSCSI along with two complete 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet Physical Layer Devices, IEEE 802.3 compliant Media Access Controls (MAC) and Physical Layer Transceiver solution for high performance network applications. By itself, the BCM5709C provides a complete dual-port, single-chip Gigabit Ethernet NIC with TCP/IP Processing Engine, RDMA NIC (RNIC), iSCSI HBA or LOM solution.

The BCM5709C 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, thereby relieving the host CPU from these time-consuming operations. On the receive path, the BCM5709C processes the frame up to the highest layer supported present in it, for example, the BCM5709C processes the frame for RDMA when the frame is an RDMA frame. With the appropriate configuration, the BCM5709C can simultaneously

support the following three functions:

• RDMA Network Interface Controller (RNIC)

• iSCSI Host Bus Adapter

• TOE Chimney-enabled network accelerator

Target Applications of the BCM5709C

• Gigabit Ethernet NICs and LAN-on Motherboard (LOM)

• iSCSI Host Bus Adapters (HBA)

• RDMA Network Interface Card (RNIC)