Intel X540-T2 Dual-Port 10Gb Network Adapter

Name : Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X540-T2

Description : dual-port 10GBASE-T adapter over cabling (RJ-45)

Chip : Intel X540 (MAC + PHY in one)

Launched : Q1 2012

Standards support : 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps (auto-negotiation)

Host interface : PCIe v2.1 (speed 5.0 GT/s) — typically x8 slot or higher

Ports : 2 × RJ-45 (10GBASE-T) via standard Ethernet cables (Cat6A, etc.)

Cable support :
• Category 6 (Cat6) – limited to shorter distances (typically ~55 m)
• Category 6A (Cat6A) – up to 100 meters of cable length at full 10G speed

Height / profile : Standard profile card

SR-IOV support : (up to 64 virtual functions per port)

VMDq : (Virtual Machine Device queues) to improve performance in virtualized environments

Offloads like :
• TCP / UDP / IP checksum offload (IPv4, IPv6)
• TCP segmentation offload (TSO) / Large Send Offload (LSO)
• QoS/traffic control support (on-chip)

I/O virtualization : routing interrupts to different CPU cores (Receive Side Scaling, RSS)

Support for booting over iSCSI (remote boot) and FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) in some scenarios