MCX516A-CCHT Mellanox 2 Ports PCI-E 3.0 X16 100 Gigabit Qsfp28 Network Adapter

Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT Dual-Port 100GbE Adapter Overview

The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT is a high-performance dual-port 100 Gigabit Ethernet network adapter engineered for modern enterprise networking, cloud computing, virtualization, and high-performance computing (HPC) environments. Featuring a PCI Express 3.0 x16 interface and dual QSFP28 ports, this Ethernet adapter delivers ultra-fast network throughput, low latency, and reliable connectivity for data-intensive applications.

Designed for demanding workloads, the Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT provides exceptional bandwidth, helping organizations accelerate storage, virtualization, AI, big data analytics, and large-scale data center operations while ensuring efficient network performance.

General Information of Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT

Manufacturer Details

• Manufacturer: Mellanox
• Part Number: MCX516A-CCHT
• Device Category: High-Speed Ethernet Network Adapter

Technical Specifications

Host Bus Interface

• PCI Express 3.0 x16
• PCIe Specification Revision 3.0
• High-bandwidth server connectivity

Dual QSFP28 Connectivity

• 2 × QSFP28 ports
• 100 Gigabit Ethernet support
• High-speed optical and DAC cable compatibility

Data Transfer Performance

• Maximum transfer speed: 100 Gbps
• 100 Gigabit Ethernet protocol
• Low-latency communication
• High-throughput packet processing

Ideal Applications

Cloud Computing

• Private cloud infrastructure
• Public cloud deployments
• Hybrid cloud environments

Virtualization Platforms

• Virtual machine hosting
• Hypervisor networking
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

High-Performance Computing (HPC)

• Scientific computing
• Engineering simulations
• Research laboratories
• Technical computing clusters

Enterprise Storage

• Storage Area Networks (SAN)
• Network Attached Storage (NAS)
• Distributed storage solutions

Reliable High-Speed Ethernet

• 100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity
• Stable network performance
• Efficient packet transmission
• Enterprise-grade reliability

Suitable Platforms

• Enterprise rack servers
• Blade servers
• Cloud computing platforms
• High-density storage systems
• Virtualization servers
• High-performance computing environments

Benefits for Modern IT Infrastructure

• Exceptional 100GbE networking performance
• Dual QSFP28 connectivity for increased flexibility
• PCIe 3.0 x16 high-bandwidth architecture
• Designed for mission-critical enterprise workloads
• Supports scalable data center expansion
• Ideal for virtualization, cloud computing, AI, and HPC
• Reliable and efficient network communication
• Professional-grade Mellanox engineering and quality

Product Highlights

• Original Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT network adapter
• Dual-port 100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity
• High-speed QSFP28 interfaces
• PCI Express 3.0 x16 host interface
• Plug-in card form factor
• Supports up to 100 Gbps data transfer rate
• Optimized for enterprise servers and storage platforms
• Ideal for cloud, virtualization, and HPC infrastructures

Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT 2 Ports PCI-E Network Adapter

The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT 2 Ports PCI-E 3.0 X16 100 Gigabit QSFP28 Network Adapter is designed to deliver exceptional networking performance for modern enterprise environments, cloud infrastructures, virtualization platforms, high-performance computing clusters, and large-scale data centers. As organizations continue to process enormous volumes of data while supporting increasingly demanding workloads, the need for reliable, low-latency, and ultra-high-speed network connectivity has become more important than ever. This dual-port 100 Gigabit Ethernet adapter addresses these challenges by providing exceptional bandwidth, intelligent hardware acceleration, and enterprise-class reliability that supports mission-critical applications.

Built on advanced Mellanox networking technology, the MCX516A-CCHT enables organizations to maximize throughput while minimizing latency across storage, virtualization, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, media production, and financial trading applications. The adapter supports PCI Express 3.0 x16 connectivity, allowing systems to fully utilize the available bandwidth between the server motherboard and the network interface card. This efficient communication significantly improves application responsiveness and overall system performance.

The inclusion of two QSFP28 ports enables flexible deployment scenarios, allowing organizations to implement link redundancy, bandwidth aggregation, failover configurations, or direct connectivity to high-speed switches and storage infrastructures. Whether deployed within enterprise servers, virtualization hosts, storage appliances, or cloud computing environments, the Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT provides scalable networking capabilities that accommodate current operational demands while supporting future infrastructure expansion.

Dual-Port 100 Gigabit Ethernet Architecture

The dual-port architecture of the Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT provides organizations with significant flexibility for designing resilient and high-bandwidth network infrastructures. Each QSFP28 port supports 100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, enabling extremely high data transfer rates for demanding enterprise workloads. This architecture allows network administrators to optimize bandwidth utilization while improving redundancy and service availability.

Dual-port configurations simplify network segmentation by allowing administrators to dedicate separate network paths for storage traffic, virtual machine communication, backup operations, or application workloads. The independent interfaces also facilitate network isolation, improving both performance and security across complex enterprise environments.

High-bandwidth connectivity becomes increasingly valuable when supporting virtualized environments hosting hundreds of virtual machines, software-defined networking deployments, distributed storage platforms, and containerized applications. The adapter efficiently handles concurrent traffic streams while maintaining consistent throughput and minimal latency.

Benefits of Dual QSFP28 Interfaces

Each QSFP28 interface supports advanced Ethernet standards while maintaining compatibility with modern enterprise switches, routers, and storage systems. Organizations can configure active-active or active-passive networking topologies depending on operational requirements. Multiple physical connections reduce single points of failure and improve business continuity during maintenance or unexpected network interruptions.

Network architects benefit from increased deployment flexibility because the adapter supports various cable lengths and optical transceiver options suitable for both short-distance rack-level deployments and long-distance data center interconnections.

Optimized Traffic Distribution

Traffic balancing across two physical interfaces enhances overall network efficiency. Load balancing mechanisms distribute workloads intelligently, preventing congestion while ensuring consistent application performance during peak operational periods. High-throughput environments such as cloud service providers and enterprise virtualization platforms particularly benefit from this architecture.

PCI Express 3.0 x16 Interface Performance

The PCI Express 3.0 x16 interface serves as the foundation for the exceptional performance offered by the Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT. The wide PCIe connection provides sufficient bandwidth between the network adapter and the host server, ensuring that network traffic can flow without unnecessary bottlenecks.

Modern servers equipped with PCIe 3.0 x16 expansion slots can fully leverage the adapter's networking capabilities while supporting simultaneous high-speed communication across multiple processors, storage devices, and memory subsystems. This balanced architecture enables efficient handling of large-scale enterprise workloads.

Maximizing Host System Efficiency

Efficient communication between the adapter and the server processor minimizes latency while reducing CPU overhead through hardware acceleration technologies. This allows processor resources to remain available for business applications instead of network packet processing.

The high-bandwidth PCIe interface becomes particularly valuable for applications involving continuous large data transfers, including backup operations, database synchronization, scientific computing, video rendering, and distributed storage systems.

Enterprise Expansion Compatibility

The PCIe 3.0 x16 standard ensures broad compatibility with enterprise rack servers from major manufacturers. Organizations upgrading existing infrastructures can often deploy the MCX516A-CCHT without requiring extensive hardware modifications, reducing implementation costs and deployment complexity.

QSFP28 Connectivity for Modern Data Centers

QSFP28 has become the preferred connectivity standard for 100 Gigabit Ethernet networking due to its compact design, exceptional bandwidth, and excellent scalability. The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT fully supports QSFP28 connectivity, allowing organizations to build high-density networking infrastructures capable of supporting future growth.

QSFP28 technology supports both optical transceivers and direct attach copper cables depending on deployment requirements. This flexibility allows organizations to optimize infrastructure costs while maintaining outstanding network performance.

Short-Range and Long-Range Deployment Flexibility

Within server racks, passive or active direct attach copper cables provide economical connectivity between servers and switches. For longer distances between data halls or buildings, optical QSFP28 transceivers provide reliable high-speed communication while maintaining signal integrity.

High-Speed Optical Networking

Optical connectivity minimizes electromagnetic interference while supporting long transmission distances. Enterprise campuses, hyperscale data centers, research institutions, and cloud providers frequently utilize optical QSFP28 solutions for backbone networking.

Cost-Effective Copper Connectivity

Direct attach copper cables simplify deployment while reducing infrastructure costs for short-distance installations. These solutions remain popular for top-of-rack switch connectivity within enterprise server cabinets.

Flexible Infrastructure Planning

The ability to choose between optical and copper connectivity enables organizations to tailor network deployments according to budget, physical distance, environmental conditions, and future expansion plans.

Advanced Hardware Acceleration Technologies

The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT incorporates numerous hardware acceleration capabilities designed to improve networking efficiency while reducing processor utilization. Offloading computationally intensive networking functions to dedicated hardware significantly enhances overall server performance.

Checksum offloading, segmentation offloading, receive side scaling, interrupt moderation, and packet steering enable servers to process high volumes of network traffic without excessive CPU consumption. These features become increasingly important as network speeds reach 100 Gigabit Ethernet levels.

Reduced CPU Utilization

By transferring packet processing responsibilities from the central processor to specialized networking hardware, the adapter enables applications to utilize additional computing resources for productive workloads. Virtualization hosts, database servers, and storage appliances benefit considerably from these optimizations.

Improved Network Efficiency

Hardware acceleration reduces packet processing delays while increasing throughput consistency. Applications requiring predictable performance experience lower latency and improved responsiveness under heavy traffic conditions.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing Optimization

Virtualized infrastructures require network adapters capable of supporting numerous virtual machines while maintaining secure isolation and high-speed communication. The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT addresses these requirements through advanced virtualization support that enables efficient resource sharing across multiple workloads.

Cloud service providers, enterprise virtualization clusters, and software-defined data centers benefit from the adapter's ability to support high-density virtual machine deployments with consistent networking performance.

Support for Virtual Machine Environments

Large virtualization clusters generate substantial east-west traffic between virtual machines. High-bandwidth dual-port networking enables seamless communication between compute nodes, storage systems, and management platforms while minimizing network congestion.

Containerized Application Performance

Modern container orchestration platforms rely on efficient networking to support microservices architectures. The adapter provides reliable connectivity for Kubernetes clusters, Docker deployments, and cloud-native applications requiring rapid communication between distributed services.

Storage Networking Performance

Storage infrastructures increasingly depend upon high-speed Ethernet connectivity to support distributed storage systems, network-attached storage, software-defined storage, and hyperconverged infrastructure. The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT delivers the bandwidth necessary for these storage-intensive environments.

Backup operations, replication, disaster recovery, database synchronization, and large-scale file transfers all benefit from the adapter's exceptional throughput capabilities. Organizations experience reduced backup windows, faster data migration, and improved storage responsiveness.

Large File Transfer Efficiency

Organizations working with multimedia production, engineering simulations, medical imaging, and scientific research frequently transfer multi-gigabyte or terabyte-scale datasets. High-speed networking significantly reduces transfer times while improving productivity.

Distributed Storage Systems

Distributed storage architectures require continuous communication between storage nodes. The adapter enables rapid synchronization while maintaining data consistency across clustered storage environments.

High-Performance Computing Applications

High-performance computing environments require networking solutions capable of supporting parallel processing across numerous compute nodes. The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT provides low-latency communication essential for scientific simulations, weather forecasting, artificial intelligence, machine learning, financial modeling, genomic research, and engineering analysis.

Large computational workloads often involve continuous exchange of intermediate processing data between cluster nodes. High-speed networking minimizes communication delays, improving overall computational efficiency and reducing total execution times.

Scientific Research Infrastructure

Research institutions processing complex simulations require predictable networking performance capable of supporting synchronized computation across distributed clusters. High-bandwidth Ethernet enables efficient collaboration between processing nodes.

Enterprise Reliability and Continuous Availability

Business-critical applications demand networking hardware capable of operating continuously with exceptional reliability. The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT is engineered for enterprise environments where downtime directly impacts productivity, customer satisfaction, and operational continuity.

Dual-port redundancy enables administrators to configure failover mechanisms that maintain connectivity during hardware maintenance, cable failures, or switch outages. This redundancy contributes significantly to highly available enterprise infrastructures.

Redundant Network Paths

Network redundancy improves resilience by providing alternate communication paths during unexpected failures. Automatic failover mechanisms minimize service interruptions while maintaining application availability.

Long-Term Infrastructure Investment

The adapter supports evolving enterprise networking requirements while remaining compatible with industry-standard Ethernet technologies. Organizations can confidently integrate the MCX516A-CCHT into long-term infrastructure modernization strategies.

Scalable Networking for Future Growth

Enterprise networking requirements continue evolving as organizations adopt cloud computing, edge computing, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and increasingly distributed business applications. The Mellanox MCX516A-CCHT provides a scalable networking foundation capable of supporting expanding workloads without compromising performance.

Its combination of dual-port 100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, PCI Express 3.0 x16 bandwidth, QSFP28 compatibility, advanced hardware acceleration, virtualization optimization, storage networking performance, and enterprise reliability makes the adapter suitable for organizations seeking to build modern, high-performance networking infrastructures capable of supporting both current operational demands and future technological growth.