The Cisco Nexus X10 SmartNIC K35-S is a 10Gbps PCI Express network interface card specifically optimized for low latency environments.
While initially conceived and built for use in latency-sensitive financial applications such as high-frequency trading, the Cisco Nexus X10 SmartNIC K35-S has appeal that extends to any environment where latency is key. On an Intel Ivy Bridge test system, median latency from application to network to application is 780 nanoseconds for small packets, which is significantly better than competing network cards on the same hardware. Half-roundtrip TCP latencies are as low as 930 nanoseconds for small payloads.