To get this CCR device to work as an NIC, a new Passthrough mode was implemented. Basically, a FastForward FastPath mode that can also pass hardware link statuses.

This NIC can reach wire-speed (100Gbps) with Jumbo frames. It ensures that in most server setups this CCR network card will not be the bottleneck.

With 4 GB of RAM, 128 MB of NAND storage, and a powerful quad-core ARMv8 64-bit CPU, this device can handle a lot: firewalls, user management and access control for home media and file servers, and even some traffic control in data centers – without the need for a stand-alone router.

This form-factor does come with certain limitations that you should keep in mind. The CCR NIC card needs some time to boot up compared to ASIC-based setups. If the host system is up before the CCR card, it will not appear among the available devices. You should add a PCIe device initialization delay after power-up in the BIOS. Or you will need to re-initialize the PCIe devices from the HOST system.