Product Brief

Marvell® FastLinQ® QL45611HLCU Adapter
Multiport 10/25/100Gb Ethernet Adapter with Universal RDMA

The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU Intelligent Ethernet Adapter with Universal
Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) supports 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 25GbE, and
100GbE QSFP28, as well as LAN (TCP/IP) traffic at line-rate speeds. The QL45611HLCU
provides extremely low host CPU usage by enabling full stateless offloads to meet theperformance requirements of the most demanding enterprise applications.

QL45611HLCU• Single port 100GbE Adapter
with quad 10/25GbE connectivity using breakout cables• Delivers full line-rate performance across a single port
• Universal RDMA—Delivers the
choice and flexibility withconcurrent support for RoCE,
RoCEv2, and iWARP
technologies• Secure firmware updateprocess with private/public key
encryption technology prevents
hackers from altering adapter• Enables provisioning of multiple
QoS backed Ethernet functions
for greater deployment flexibility through switch-independent
NIC partitioning• Boosts host CPU efficiency withhardware offloads for GRE,
NVGRE, GENEVE, and VXLAN
tunnels

The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU leverages Marvell’s 15+ years of expertise in
Ethernet by providing the highest levels of performance, efficiency, and scalability forthe enterprise data center.
For more effective use of the 10/25/100GbE bandwidth, the QL45611HLCUIntelligent Ethernet Adapter offers switch-independent NIC partitioning (NPAR), whichenables segmentation of a 10/25/100GbE port into multiple network partitions anddynamic allocation of bandwidth to each port. The segmentation allows IT organizations
to optimize resources while lowering infrastructure and operational costs.
The evolution of data centers—triggered by high-density server virtualization, software-defined networking (SDN), and multitenant cloud computing platforms—demands
a high-performance 10/25/100GbE solution that boosts CPU efficiency and reduces
capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational expenditures (OPEX) of the migration to
10/25/100GbE. The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU is the best choice for workload-intensive computing environments, providing reliable, high-performance 10/25/100GbE
connectivity solutions.

Features• PCI Express® (PCIe®) Gen 3 x16 (8GT/s)
support• Full line-rate performance across single
and quad ports• Broad operating system (OS) andhypervisor support• Network boot support‒ iSCSI (SW) remote boot‒ Preboot Execution Environment(PXE) 2.0
‒ Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) support• Simplifies deployment and troubleshooting using QConvergeConsole®
(QCC) GUI, QLogic® Control Suite (QCS)

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CLI, QCC PowerKit, UEFI humaninterface infrastructure (HII), in-OS
utilities, QCC vCenter GUI and ESXCLIPlug-ins, and OpenStack® integration• Switch-independent NPAR with up to
16 partition assignments per adapter• Marvell Data Plane Development Kit(DPDK) high-speed packet processing
engine delivers up to 68 million packets
per second at 64B frame sizes• Marvell Flow Filtering is supported on
Linux® using the ethtool -u/-U
commands. See the n-tuple Flow

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Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU Adapter
Product Brief

Filtering and Steering FastLinQ
41000/45000 Series Adapters
Deployment Guide for more
information.
• Universal RDMA technologies—RDMA
over Converged Ethernet (RoCE),
RoCEv2, and Internet wide area RDMA
protocol (iWARP)• MSI and MSI-X support• IPv4 and IPv6 stateless offloads• PCI-SIG® single root input/output
virtualization (SR-IOV) with up to
240 virtual functions‒ Linux SR-IOV VF QoS support
through the ip link set
command• Comprehensive stateless offloads• Auto negotiation: 10G/25G/100G• FastLinQ SmartAN™ for simplified
connectivity with SFP and QSFP
interfaced switches. (SFP/QSFP)
interfaces can accept direct attach
cable (DAC) or optical (discrete
separate optical modules or active
optic cable (AOC)) connections).
• RX/TX multiqueue‒ VMware® NetQueue‒ Windows® Hyper-V® Virtual Machine
Queue• Support for virtual LAN (vLAN) tagging• Support for jumbo frames larger than
1,500 bytes (up to 9,600 bytes)• Network teaming, failover, and loadbalancing‒ Switch independent NIC teaming/bonding‒ Switch dependent NIC teaming/bonding such as link aggregation
control protocol (LACP) and generictrunking• Data center bridging (DCB)‒ Data center bridging capability
exchange protocol (DCBX) link layer
discovery protocol (LLDP)‒ Priority-based flow control (PFC)‒ Traffic Class over vLAN’s 3-bit
priority code point (PCP) field or
Traffic Class over the IP header’s
3-bit differentiated services code
point (DSCP) field‒ Enhanced Transmission Selection(ETS)‒ Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN
or CN)‒ Data Center Quantized Congestion
Notification (DCQCN)• Non-offloaded Storage over Ethernet‒ Linux Multiqueue‒ iSCSI using OS-based software
initiators• Tunneling offloads• Offloaded storage over Ethernet‒ Windows Network Virtualization
using Generic Routing Encapsulation(NVGRE)‒ Increases server performance withfull hardware offload for storage
traffic‒ Linux Generic Routing Encapsulation(GRE)‒ VMware, Windows, and Linux Virtual
Extensible LAN (VXLAN)‒ Linux and VMware Generic Network
Virtualization Encapsulation(GENEVE)• Receive side scaling (RSS)• Transmit side scaling (TSS)

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Benefits
Simplified Migration to 10/25/100GbE
The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU features a high-speed, flexible architecture andswitch-independent NPAR technology. Designed for both physical and virtual environments, this switch-agnostic approach enables administrators to split up the
10/25/100GbE network pipe to divide and reallocate bandwidth and resources, as
needed, at the adapter level.
• Customers deploying rack and tower servers with multiple GbE adapters can greatly
benefit from consolidating multiple network adapters and freeing up PCI slots forother add-in card upgrades.
• With NPAR, QL45611HLCU Adapters can further partition their network bandwidth
into multiple virtual connections, making 1 adapter appear as either 8 (in 1x100Gmode) or 16 (in quad port mode) adapters to the OS for use by the applications.
• NPAR greatly simplifies the physical connectivity to the server, reduces implementation time, and lowers the acquisition cost of 10/25/100GbE migration.
• The QL45611HLCU is the ideal choice for migrating multiple 1GbE network connections to consolidated 10/25/100GbE. It is compatible with SR optics, LR optics,
direct-attach copper (DAC) at 10 and 100G; as well as SR optics, LR optics, and DAC
that does not require RS-FEC at 25G.
• The QL45611HLCU can converge storage and networking I/O by deploying OS-based
software iSCSI initiators over its optical or DAC connections.
Designed for Next-gen Server Virtualization
The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU supports today’s most compelling set of powerful
networking virtualization features: SR-IOV, NPAR, tunneling offloads (VXLAN, GRE,GENEVE, and NVGRE), and industry-leading performance, thus enhancing the underlying server virtualization features.
• SR-IOV delivers higher performance and lower CPU use with increased virtual
machine (VM) scalability.
• Marvell NPAR enables up to 8 (1x100G mode) or 16 (quad port mode) physical,
switch-agnostic, switch-independent NIC partitions per adapter. Dynamic andfine-grained bandwidth provisioning enables control of network traffic from VMs andhypervisor services.
• Concurrent support for SR-IOV and NPAR enables virtual environments with the
choice and flexibility to create an agile virtual server platform.
• Availability of both RSS and TSS allows for more efficient load balancing acrossmultiple CPU cores.

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High-Performance Multitenancy Delivered
As large-scale private and public cloud deployment requirements for isolation andsecurity stretch the boundaries of traditional vLANs, the Marvell FastLinQ
QL45611HLCU delivers network virtualization features for high-performance overlay
networks.
• Designed to meet the demands of large, public cloud deployments, the QL45611HLCU
features tunneling offloads for multitenancy with VXLAN, GRE, GENEVE, and NVGRE
support.
• Line-rate 10/25/100GbE performance across individual ports in multitenant deployments maximizes server-processing performance by delivering an offloaded Ethernet
adapter for enterprise, telco, and cloud deployments on Microsoft® Windows Server®,
VMware vSphere®, and various Linux distributions.

Simplified Management
Marvell’s QConvergeConsole (QCC) delivers a broad set of powerful Ethernet adapter
management features for administrators to maximize application performance andavailability. vCenter GUI and ESXCLI Plug-ins integration are also available.
QCS CLI is available for locally and remotely managing Linux and Windows servers. QCC
PowerKit is available for remotely managing Linux, VMware vCenter (PowerCLI), andWindows servers. Additionally, pre-boot UEFI HII system BIOS device configuration isavailable on servers that support UEFI HII.

Accelerate Any Network With Universal RDMA Offload
The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU supports RoCE and iWARP (capable, not enabled)
acceleration to deliver low latency, low CPU utilization and high performance on
Windows, VMware, and Linux operating systems. The QL45611HLCU has the uniquecapability to deliver Universal RDMA that enables RoCE, RoCEv2, and iWARP. Marvell
Universal RDMA provides the ultimate flexibility in accelerating use cases like Microsoft
Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), Windows Live Migration, VMware PVRDMA and vSAN,
NVMe™ over Fabrics (NVMe-oF), CEPHS and NFS over RDMA, Linux/Windows VF RDMA,
and so on. Marvell’s cutting-edge offloading technology increases cluster efficiency andscalability to many thousands of nodes for HyperConverged infrastructure deployments. Customers looking to scale out NVMe-oF can leverage the QL45611HLCU
capabilities of supporting RoCE, RoCEv2, iWARP, or the newly added TCP (referred to as
NVMe-oF over TCP or NVMe/TCP) in addition to the RDMA transport fabrics.

Accelerate Telco Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
Workloads
The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU supports NFV, which allows decoupling network
functions and services from dedicated hardware (such as routers, firewalls, and loadbalancers) into hosted VMs. NFV enables network administrators to flexibly create
network functions and services as they need them, reducing capital expenditure andoperating expenses, and enhancing business and network services agility. Marvell

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technology is integrated into the DPDK and can deliver up to 68 million packets per
second to host the most demanding NFV workloads.
The QL45611HLCU also supports the NSX-T/N-VDS Enhanced data path/Network Stack(ENS) polling mode driver (QeDeNTV_ens) for NFV workloads on VMware ESXi 6.7.
OPEX Savings With Low-power PCIe Gen 3
The QL45611HLCU Adapter is a PCIe Gen 3 host bus connectivity based adapter thathas one of the lowest power-consumption profiles in the industry.
• Supporting PCIe Gen 3 host bus connectivity enables the QL45611HLCU to deliverline-rate performance without compromise.
• The QL45611HLCU is designed to provide maximum power efficiency while deliveringa high-performance, I/O connectivity platform.

Trusted, Secure, Reliable, and Interoperable
The Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU 10/25/100GbE Adapter adheres to standards that
ensure interoperability with a wide range of network solutions. Marvell adapters are
secure by design. Through public and private key encryption technology, the adapters
enforce a process for secure firmware updates that prevent hackers from altering thecode running on the adapters.

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Host Bus Interface

Ethernet (continued)

Forward Error Correction (FEC)Bus Interface

Compliance• PCI Express (PCIe) Gen 3 x16• IEEE Specifications• FireCode, BASE-R IEEE 802.3-2018 Clause 74(FC-FEC) on 10G through 100G interfaces

Host Interrupts• MSI-X supports independent queues
I/O Virtualization and Multitenancy• SR-IOV (up to 240 virtual functions)• Switch-independent NPAR (up to 8 physicalfunctions in 1x100G mode or 16 physicalfunctions in quad port mode)• GRE and NVGRE packet task offloads• VXLAN packet task offloads• GENEVE packet task offloads
Compliance• PCI Base Specification, rev. 3.1‒ 802.1AS (Precise Synchronization)‒ 802.1ax-2008 (Link Aggregation)‒ 802.1p (Priority Encoding)‒ 802.1q (VLAN)‒ 802.1Qau (CN)
‒ 802.1Qaz (DCBX and ETS)
‒ 802.1Qbb (PFC)‒ 802.3-2018 Annex 31B (Ethernet Pause
Flow Control)‒ (25GbE) 802.3-2018 Clause 110 (Direct
Attach Copper)‒ (10GbE) 802.3-2018 Clause 52 (10Gb
Ethernet Optical) , Annex 83B (XLAUI Chip
to module) to support 802.3-2018
Clause 52 (SR and LR optical)• PCI Bus Power Management Interface
Specification, rev. 1.2‒ (100GbE) 802.3-2018 Clause 92 (Direct
Attach Copper), Annex 83E (chip tomodule for use with Clause 95 (SR optical),Clause 88 (LR optical), and 100G PSM4 andCWDM MSA modules)• Advanced configuration and power interface(ACPI) v2.0

‒ 1588-2002 PTPv1 (Precision Time
Protocol)• PCI Express Card Electromechanical
Specification, rev. 3.0

EthernetThroughput• 10/25/100Gbps line rate for single and quad
port
• 10G/25G/100G Auto Negotiation
Ethernet Frame• 1,500 bytes and larger (jumbo frame)‒ 1588-2008 PTPv2‒ (10GbE) SFF8431 Annex E (10Gb Direct
Attach Copper)• RFCs‒ IPv4 (RFC 791)
‒ IPv6 (RFC 2460)• Secure Firmware Update process• Smart Auto Negotiation (FastLinQ SmartAN)• TCP segmentation offload (TSO)RDMA• Large send offload (LSO)

Universal RDMA

• VMware large receive offload (LRO)• RoCE• Generic segmentation offload (GSO)• TCP and user datagram protocol (UDP)
checksum offloads• Receive segment coalescing (RSC)• Interrupt coalescing• RoCEv2• QCC integrated network management utility(GUI) for Linux and Windows• QCC Plug-in for vSphere (GUI), and ESXCLI
plug-in for VMware• QCC PowerKit (Windows PowerShell®)cmdlets for Linux, VMware, and Windows• Pre-boot UEFI HII system BIOS device
configuration pages• Native OS management tools for networking
Boot Support• PXE 2.0
• UEFI• iSCSI (SW) remote bootOperating System Support• For the latest applicable operating system
information, see www.marvell.com
Packaging• Single and quad port modes available over a
single QSFP port. See the adapter features
on page 8.
Form Factor• MD2: PCI Express short, low-profile card:
167.65mm × 68.90mm (6.60in. × 2.71in.)Environment and Equipment
Temperature• Operating: 32°F to 131°F (0°C to 55°C)• NFSoRDMA• VMware NetQueue, Microsoft Hyper-V VMQ(up to 208 dynamic queues)/Virtual Machine
Multi-Queue (VMMQ)/Virtual Switch RSS(vRSS)/RSS version 2 (RSSv2). Linux
Multiqueue, and Virtual Machine Device
queues (VMDq)• S2D• Storage: –40°F to 149°F (–40°C to 65°C)
Airflow• 200LFM• PVRDMA

Humidity (Relative, Non-condensing)• Live Migration• Operating and non-operating: 10% to 90%• SMB Direct• NVMe-oF• NFS• CEPHS over RDMA
• VF RDMA

AH2058030-00 Rev. B 02/21• QCS Command Line Interface (CLI) for Linuxand Windows• Storage over RDMA: iSER, SMB Direct, S2D,
VF RDMA, and NVMe-oF

RDMA Use Cases• Universal RDMAManagement Tools and Device Utilities• iWARP• RSS and TSS• DPDK/VMware N-VDS Enhanced Data Path

Tools and Utilities

Ports
Board Firmware Features

Stateless Offload• Linux hardware generic receive offload (GRO)• Reed Solomon IEEE 802.3-2018 Clause 91(RS-FEC) on 100G interfaces

Note:
All advertised features are enabled in the hardware.
Actual feature availability is dependent on software
driver releases. See the release notes.

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Environment and Equipment (continued)

Approvals—Safety

Agency Approvals—EMI and EMC

Compliance

US and Canada

US and Canada• RoHS compliant• UL 60950-1• FCC Rules, CFR Title 47, Part 15, Subpart
Class A

• CSA C22.2

Cable Distance (Maximum)
Table 1. Cable Distance
Cable and Maximum Distance (m)
Rate

DAC

SR FOC

AOC

10G

7

400 OM4300 OM3

30

25G

31

Note 1

Note 1

5100 OM470 OM3

30

100G

2

• Industry Canada, ICES-003: Class A

EuropeEurope• TUV EN60950-1• EN55032• TUV IEC 60950-1• EN55024• CB Certified• EN61000-3-2• EN61000-3-3
Japan• VCCI: Class A
New Zealand and Australia

DAC = Direct attach cable
SR FOC = SR fiber optic cable
AOC = Active optic cable• AS/NZS: Class A

1. Only for modules and cables that do not require RS-FEC.
The actual maximum supported lengths on 25G DACs andoptics depend on the module vendor’s specifications. For
DACs, the gauge and cable quality (CA-25G-N versus CA25G-S) affect the usable maximum distance when no FEC or
FC-FEC is used: CA-25G-N cables support 3m length with no
FEC, CA-25G-S cables support 3m length with FC-FEC. For
AOCs, 30m is generally supported with no FEC or FC-FEC. For
separate 25G SR optical modules, the vendor specifications
and the type of FEC (no FEC versus FC-FEC) and the typeof fiber (OM3 versus OM4) determines the maximum reachpossible: generally 30m on OM3/60m on OM4 with no FEC,
and 70m on OM3/100m on OM4 with FC-FEC. LR opticalmodules may need FEC to reach their maximum 10KM
distance.

Korea• KC-RRA Class A
Taiwan• BSMI CNS 13438

2. Maximum distances on 100G DACs and SR/LR optics may
require RS-FEC.

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Table 2. QL45611HLCU Features
General Specs
Ports

1/4

Port Speeds

1x100, 4x251, 4x101

Connectors

QSFP28Form Factor(see “Packaging” on Page 6)

PCIe MD2Media

DAC2, optics2, AOC2

FEC Mode

FireCode and Reed Solomon FEC3

SmartAN™ Mode√
Storage

Universal RDMA (RoCE/RoCEv2/ iWARP)√(Note 4)

NVME-oF over TCP/RDMA√

FCoE Offload—

iSCSI Offload—

Virtualization and Cloud
Concurrent SR-IOV/NPAR√(Note 5)DPDK√

Flow Filtering√

Tunneling Offload (VXLAN/GENEVE/
NVGRE/GRE)√

Physical Specifications
Cooling
Requirements (LFM/°C)

N/A(Note 6)

1. Quad port mode over a single QSFP interface.
2. Long DACs and SR optics/AOCs that require Reed Solomon FEC on 25GbE links are notsupported.
3. Reed Solomon FEC supported on 100GbE links only.
4. 1x100G mode is iWARP capable. Contact your Marvell representative for more details. The
QL45611HLCU supports iWARP (and RoCE/RoCEv2) in 4x10G and 4x25G modes.
5. There are up to eight NPAR partitions per port in single port mode, and up to four NPAR
partitions per port in quad-port mode.
6. Heatsinks have a built-in cooling fan.

Table 3. Ordering Information
Part Number
QL45611HLCU

Description

Form Factor

Single Port 100GbE/Quad Port 10GbE/QuadPort 25GbE QSFP28 Adapter

PCIe MD2

Platform
L2, RoCE/RocEv2, iWARP capable

This adapter supports adaptive voltage scaling (AVS).
To order a bulk kit, add -BK to the end of the part number; for example, QL45611HLCU-BK.
To order a single pack, add -CK to the end of the part number; for example, QL45611HLCU-SP.
All HL (MD2 PCIe stand-up) adapters come with both full height and low profile brackets.
DAC cables, SR/LR optics are not included. See https://www.marvell.com/documents/ gx4rrv7xnip1ea6irzc7/ for a list of cables and optics that have been tested by
Marvell and its partners.

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Marvell FastLinQ QL45611HLCU Adapter
Product Brief

To deliver the data infrastructure technology that connects the world, we’re building solutions on the most powerful foundation: our partnerships with our customers.
Trusted by the world’s leading technology companies for 25 years, we move, store, process and secure the world’s data with semiconductor solutions designed for ourcustomers’ current needs and future ambitions. Through a process of deep collaboration and transparency, we’re ultimately changing the way tomorrow’s enterprise,cloud, automotive, and carrier architectures transform—for the better.
Copyright © 2021 Marvell. All rights reserved. Marvell and the Marvell logo are trademarks of Marvell or its affiliates. Please visit www.marvell.com for a complete listof Marvell trademarks. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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