Exalerator Software Suite by Exar

Exar Corporation announced the Exalerator Software Suite to broaden the use of security in web and cloud applications by simplifying deployment for OEMs and service providers.

It integrates with Exar’s hardware-based security products to deliver performance, increased system efficiencies and workload optimization. Based on open source software, the Exalerator suite includes OpenSSL Exalerator, Web Server Exalerator for Apache and Nginx, and CryptoAPI Exalerator which supports IPsec and dm-crypt for networking and storage applications, respectively.

Many research firms are predicting cloud services will continue to grow and as part of that trend so will the need for security. OEMs and service providers who traditionally have used a software implementation for encryption and public key processing can now easily and quickly add a hardware-accelerated security solution that can enhance system performance, while reducing CPU utilization and power consumption.

"Security has always been a necessity within the data center but with the growing discovery of additional web vulnerabilities and the expanding use of cloud services, security concerns are expanding as data moves out of the data center," said Charles Kolodgy, Research vice president, Security Products, IDC. "Efforts to simplify and increase the use of encryption are essential to maintain data integrity and our privacy in this evolving connected world."

Closely tied to the increase in cloud services is the growing trend for companies to deploy secure web servers for everything from e-mail to financial transactions. The increased use of SSL (i.e. HTTPS) is placing a processing burden on those servers. Encryption, authentication, and public key processing used for SSL are computationally intensive and can saturate multiple multi-core CPUs.

This issue will be magnified as the market transitions from 1K to 2K public key sizes.

Exar’s Express DX cards and security processors off-load encryption, authentication and public key processing thereby reducing CPU utilization by over 95% and enabling optimized workloads, higher system performance and reduced overall power consumption. End customers can benefit from reduced TCO and higher levels of security.

"Open source software is used throughout our digital universe," said Zack Mihalis, vice president, Datacom and storage Business Unit, Exar. "The growing need for security, specifically encryption, in a broad set of applications makes this a perfect time to combine the benefits of open source software with our hardware acceleration capabilities. Now OEMs and service providers can add hardware accelerated encryption and provide higher performance, better CPU utilization, and workload optimization to their customers."

Exar’s hardware accelerated solutions will be demonstrated at the upcoming RSA Conference, February 27 through March 1, in San Francisco, CA. The demonstration will showcase the performance capabilities that hardware-acceleration provides with the added benefits of reduced CPU utilization and power consumption.

About Exar’s Exalerator Software Suite
The Exalerator Software Suite includes OpenSSL Exalerator, Web Server Exalerator for Apache, Web Server Exalerator for Nginx, and CryptoAPI Exalerator. Each of the Exalerator solutions leverages open source software combined with Exar’s DX Software Development Kit, enabling hardware acceleration using the Express DX 1700 and DX 1800 cards, and the 8200 series of security processors.

Availability
The OpenSSL Exalerator, Web Server Exalerator and CryptoAPI Exalerator are available, with the Web Server Exalerator for Nginx available in March. All are available, free of charge, to customers of Exar’s hardware-accelerated security and compression cards and devices.