CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., 11 March 2009. GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms in Charlottesville, Va., is introducing the WANic 56511 and WANic 56512 single board computer packet processors to enable systems integrators to respond to network traffic growth from search engines, cloud computing, mobile devices, and Web 2.0.

The embedded computer devices, which offload processing from the host system, are for military system design engineers, system architects and product managers building networked communications systems using embedded processors based on the PCI Express architecture who need secure IP communications and 10-Gigabit Ethernet packet processing.

"As networks expand, become larger, and more complex our customers are looking to add 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces to their communications systems, yet this places an additional processing burden on those systems, explains Rubin Dhillon, communications product manager at GE Fanuc.

"The WANic 56511 and 56512 are designed to offload the network processing in a communications appliance or server, Dhillon says. "Execution of traffic shaping, security algorithms, compression, encryption and so on are performed by the WANic packet processors prior to the network traffic reaching the server."

The WANic 56511 and 56512 have the OCTEON Plus CN5650 12-core 750 MHz processor from Cavium Networks, one 10-Gigabit Ethernet interface, and an eight-lane PCI Express host interface.

Other features include as much as 4 gigabytes of DDR2 SDRAM packet memory and as much as 4 gigabytes of Flash disk. A software development package provides power on self test (POST) firmware embedded in the hardware.

For more information contact GE Fanuc online at www.gefanuc.com.