HP AXL300 Accelerator PCI Card for ProLiant Servers

The AXL300 is enabled with Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) to further improve performance to more than 660 SSL connections per second with CRT-enabled applications. It is also enabled with HP MultiPrime, a patented technology from HP/Atalla that increases the performance of public key cryptography on both server and client platforms and on resource-constrained devices such as web phones and PDAs. Up to eight cards per ProLiant server provide linear, scalable performance. The AXL300 is designed for fast and easy installation and use on HP ProLiant servers and is supported by HP Systems Insight Manager.

Models

• The performance solution for secure Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4 application servers
  
• Overcomes the performance bottleneck of SSL-secured applications
  
• Supports over 330 SSL connections per second
  
• Supports over 660 SSL connections using Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT)
  
• Accelerates SSL security processing for secure web application servers such as Microsoft IIS and Netscape 3.5 or later
  
• Adds a dedicated coprocessor to HP ProLiant servers, offloading cycle-consuming exponentiation
  
• Enabled with HP MultiPrime for MultiPrime-enabled applications such as wireless e-Commerce
  
• Up to eight AXL300 cards per HP ProLiant server provide linear, scalable performance
  

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a cryptographic protocol that protects the digital communications between a browser and a server. SSL is a standard for internet security and is found in software in millions of browsers and thousands of application servers. It is a crucial element in many internet applications such as home banking, online trading, and consumer e-commerce. As secure servers handle more and more SSL traffic, a performance bottleneck occurs which can severely affect customer satisfaction.

The SSL protocol provides a "handshake" between a browser and a server that establishes which cryptographic algorithms will be used for that session. This handshake requires the server to perform a compute-intense exponentiation of a cryptographic key. Performing this exponentiation in software, a typical secure server is severely taxed at only a handful of SSL connections per second. The server's CPU performs cryptographic processing with few cycles left for business processing. A successful application may have new customers waiting to connect to the server. Customers may become frustrated and go elsewhere.

The immediate recourse to the performance bottleneck is to add another application processor. This can be expensive and may require that additional memory be installed. The preferred alternative is to offload all exponentiation processing to a special-purpose co-processing card, leaving the general-purpose processor free to run the business application.

The AXL300 brings the power of a special-purpose processor to positively affect the performance bottleneck of secure applications. For example, a typical secure server is saturated operating only a handful of SSL connects per second at 100 percent CPU utilization. The AXL300 Accelerator Card offloads security processing overhead so that CPU utilization devoted to exponentiation drops to near zero, therefore freeing the server to run the business application.

As a more customers access the secure application on the server, the AXL300 Accelerator PCI Card continues to alleviate the performance bottleneck caused by the compute-intense exponentiation. The AXL300 can support more than 330 SSL connections per second using 1024-bit RSA keys with today's standard web servers. The HP AXL300 Accelerator PCI Card is also enabled with Chinese Remainder Theorem. The card has been tested at more 660 SSL connections per second with CRT for faster performance with CRT-enabled web servers. With support for HP MultiPrime, public key cryptography performance gains are realized on both server platforms and on resource-constrained client devices, such as web phones and PDAs.

Multiple AXL300 cards scale linearly and ensure that the secure application server can grow with business needs. The result is a much more cost-effective Windows based solution to alleviate the performance bottleneck of a secure application, which in turn ensures that customers do not leave your web site prematurely.

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