Intel XL710-QDA2 40GbE QSFP+ Dual Port PCIe Ethernet Network Adapter

Product Overview

The Intel® Ethernet Converged Network Adapter XL710-QDA2 is a dual-port 40GbE adapter that belongs to the Intel® Ethernet 700 Series. Designed for server virtualization, cloud deployment, and high-performance computing (HPC) environments, the XL710-QDA2 delivers reliable performance, low latency, and highly efficient CPU utilization.

By utilizing hardware-based virtualization offloads and standard QSFP+ ports, it addresses the demanding needs of the next-generation agile data center by supporting both 40GbE speed configurations and breakout capabilities (e.g., $4 \times 10\text{GbE}$).

Technical Specifications

Parameter	Specifications
Brand	Intel®
Product Code / MPN	XL710QDA2 / XL710-QDA2
Controller Silicon	Intel® Ethernet Controller XL710
Data Rate per Port	40 Gbps (Supports $4\times10\text{GbE}$ breakout configurations)
Port Count	Dual-Port
Connector Interface	QSFP+ (Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable Plus)
Cabling Types Supported	QSFP+ Direct Attach Copper (DAC), Active Optical Cables (AOC), QSFP+ Transceivers (SR4, LR4)
Host Bus Type	PCI Express 3.0 x8 (8.0 GT/s)
Form Factor	Low-Profile PCIe Card (Standard bracket installed, low-profile bracket included in the box)

Key Features & Technologies

1. Network Virtualization Offloads

The XL710-QDA2 excels in virtualized environments by offloading encapsulation and decapsulation protocols directly onto the hardware, freeing up host CPU cycles:

• Overlay Tunneling Offloads: Full support for VXLAN, NVGRE, and GENEVE.

• Intel® Virtual Technology for Connectivity (VT-c): Maximizes I/O throughput in virtualized platforms.

• Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV): Supports up to 128 Virtual Functions (VFs) for direct VM network access with near-native performance.

• Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq): Reduces hypervisor CPU overhead by routing packets directly to dedicated VM queues.

2. Traffic Management & Performance Optimization

• Intel® Ethernet Flow Director: Hardware-based flow classification that steers traffic to specific CPU cores, improving application response times and cache efficiency.

• Stateless Offloads: TCP/UDP/IP checksum offloads, Large Send Offloads (LSO), and Transmit/Receive Side Scaling (RSS).

• Storage over Ethernet: Optimized support for iSCSI and FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) to unify LAN and SAN traffic onto a single adapter.

3. Unified Management & Unified Drivers

• Intel® PROSet Utility: Simple Windows-based device manager configuration.

• Data Center Bridging (DCB): Supports priority-based flow control (PFC) and enhanced transmission selection (ETS) for lossless Ethernet fabrics.

Power & Environmental Specifications

• Power Consumption:

  • Typical Power: 3.6 W

  • Maximum Power: 4.9 W (with passive copper cables)

  • Note: Adding active transceivers will increase power consumption depending on the module’s power class (typically up to 1.5 W per port).

• Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 55 °C (32 °F to 131 °F)

• Storage Temperature: -40 °C to 70 °C (-40 °F to 158 °F)

• Airflow Requirement: 100 LFM at 55 °C

Operating System & Driver Compatibility

• Linux: RHEL, CentOS, SLES, Debian, Ubuntu (via i40e base driver)

• Windows: Windows Server (with Intel® PROSet drivers)

• Hypervisors: VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, XenServer