NIC Intelligence
There appears to be two major (and interrelated) trends in networking cards (NICs) -- capabilities increasingly migrating from the "system" to the NIC and a convergence of previously distinct technologies.
The capability migration is seen with an increasing amount of security fucntionally and offloads (e.g. ipsec and linksec), IO (e.g. iSCSI), virtualization (chip level support for virtual machines via classification, multiple MAC address support, multiple TX and RX rings, etc), protocol offloads (LSO, LRO, Checksumming, Jumbo Frames, etc.), etc. capabilities. These allow commodity NICs to enhances performance, increase flexibility and increase system capabilities which can be implemented in a way that are largely transparent (e.g. requiring no human intervention or application changes).
The convergence aspect of the message is essentially that demarcation between classical technology boundaries such as security, virtualization, management, IO, networking, etc. are disappearing. The goal for Intel (and other vendors) to converge the technologies such that a single NIC can support multiple virtual machines on one end and _single_ fabric on the other end that also includes classical networking, plus IO (e.g. iSCSI), management, security, etc. Additionally they are trying to extend the system network further into the network using things like Linksec, BCN (essentially gathering stats to better tune congestion control, etc.).
The biggest challenges that we are faced with in the world of more intelligent NICs is first how to make much of that intelligence transparent to the consumer (people, applications, etc.) and secondly how to make the capabilities that are visible easier to manage.
