900-9X4AC-0056-ST3 Nvidia ConnectX-4 VPI 100GbE Dual-Port QSFP28 PCIe Adapter Card

Overview of the 100GbE Network Interface Card

The 900-9X4AC-0056-ST3 NVIDIA ConnectX-4 VPI 100GbE Dual-Port QSFP28 PCIe Adapter Card is a high-performance network interface solution engineered for enterprise-grade data center environments, cloud infrastructures, hyperscale computing platforms, and high-performance computing clusters. Designed to deliver ultra-low latency, exceptional throughput, and flexible protocol support, this advanced PCIe networking adapter combines InfiniBand and Ethernet capabilities into a single versatile hardware platform.

General Specification

• Brand: Nvidia 
• Part Number: 900-9X4AC-0056-ST3
• Product Type: Network Interface Card

Key Features of Interface Card

• Dual QSFP28 ports
• 100Gb Ethernet support
• EDR InfiniBand support
• Flexible cable compatibility
• High-speed optical interoperability

Performance Features

• Ultra-low latency architecture
• RDMA acceleration
• RoCE support
• SR-IOV virtualization
• GPUDirect RDMA
• Hardware offloading
• Advanced packet steering
• Zero-copy transfer optimization

Ideal Deployment Scenarios

• Enterprise data centers
• Cloud service providers
• AI and machine learning clusters
• High-performance computing systems
• Distributed storage networks
• Virtualized enterprise workloads
• Financial trading infrastructure
• Scientific research institutions

Server Platform Compatibility

• Dell PowerEdge servers
• HPE ProLiant systems
• Lenovo ThinkSystem platforms
• Supermicro enterprise servers
• Custom HPC nodes
• White-box cloud hardware

Operating System Support

• Linux distributions
• Windows Server editions
• VMware ESXi
• Hyper-V
• OpenStack environments
• Kubernetes platforms

NVIDIA ConnectX-4 VPI 100GbE QSFP28 PCIe Adapter

Built on NVIDIA ConnectX-4 Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) architecture, this adapter card supports both 100Gb Ethernet and EDR InfiniBand networking, enabling organizations to optimize network performance across diverse deployment scenarios. Its dual-port QSFP28 connectivity allows simultaneous high-bandwidth communication paths, helping eliminate bottlenecks in storage networking, virtualization clusters, artificial intelligence environments, and data-intensive workloads.

As organizations increasingly demand faster data movement, scalable compute resources, and reduced latency across interconnected systems, the ConnectX-4 VPI adapter has become an essential component for modern IT infrastructure. Its support for RDMA, SR-IOV, RoCE, GPUDirect, and advanced hardware acceleration technologies makes it a preferred solution for mission-critical enterprise networking.

Core Architecture and Hardware Design

At the center of the 900-9X4AC-0056-ST3 adapter lies the NVIDIA ConnectX-4 intelligent network controller, purpose-built to handle high-speed packet processing with exceptional efficiency. The integrated controller offloads numerous networking tasks directly from the CPU, significantly improving server performance and reducing processing overhead.

By accelerating packet classification, transport handling, congestion management, and virtualization operations in hardware, the adapter enables servers to dedicate more CPU cycles to application execution rather than network processing. This architectural advantage is particularly valuable in dense compute environments where efficiency and scalability directly impact operational costs.

PCIe Interface Optimization

The adapter leverages a PCI Express Gen3 x16 interface to provide sufficient host bandwidth for sustained 100Gbps throughput. PCIe Gen3 connectivity ensures fast communication between the network adapter and the host motherboard, minimizing internal bottlenecks and supporting demanding multi-threaded workloads.

The optimized PCIe subsystem supports direct memory access mechanisms, reducing latency and enabling rapid movement of data between storage, memory, and network resources.

Dual-Port QSFP28 Connectivity

The inclusion of dual QSFP28 ports enhances deployment flexibility and redundancy. Each QSFP28 port supports high-speed optical or direct attach copper connections capable of delivering up to 100Gbps data rates.

100Gb Ethernet Performance Capabilities

The adapter delivers full 100 Gigabit Ethernet throughput, supporting data-intensive applications that require sustained ultra-fast transmission rates. Workloads such as big data analytics, machine learning model training, media rendering, and distributed storage replication benefit directly from this bandwidth capacity.

Massive throughput minimizes synchronization delays across clustered servers and accelerates movement of large datasets between compute and storage nodes.

Ultra-Low Latency Networking

Low latency is one of the defining strengths of the ConnectX-4 platform. The adapter is engineered to reduce packet traversal times to microsecond levels, making it ideal for latency-sensitive environments.

Efficient Packet Processing

High packet-per-second capability is critical in modern virtualized and cloud-native environments. The adapter supports advanced packet steering and intelligent flow handling that maximize throughput even with small packet sizes.

Hardware acceleration for checksum processing, segmentation, and packet encapsulation reduces CPU interruptions and ensures consistent application responsiveness.

InfiniBand and VPI Flexibility

One of the most valuable features of the 900-9X4AC-0056-ST3 adapter is VPI support, allowing administrators to configure ports as either Ethernet or InfiniBand depending on deployment requirements.

This protocol flexibility protects infrastructure investments by enabling organizations to adapt networking strategies without replacing hardware.

EDR InfiniBand Performance

When configured for InfiniBand operation, the adapter supports Enhanced Data Rate communication up to 100Gbps. InfiniBand remains the preferred networking protocol for supercomputing and tightly coupled computational clusters due to its extremely low latency and RDMA efficiency.

EDR InfiniBand enables rapid node-to-node communication essential for parallel computing applications and distributed scientific workloads.

RDMA and Direct Memory Access Features

RDMA enables direct data transfer between server memories without involving the operating system kernel or CPU intervention. The ConnectX-4 adapter fully supports RDMA technologies that significantly reduce latency and improve bandwidth utilization.

This capability is essential for applications requiring deterministic performance and minimal software overhead.

RoCE Compatibility

RDMA over Converged Ethernet allows enterprises to achieve RDMA benefits while maintaining Ethernet infrastructure. The adapter supports RoCE implementations that combine Ethernet familiarity with low-latency transport efficiency.

Zero-Copy Data Movement

By enabling direct memory transfers, the adapter minimizes unnecessary data copies across system memory buffers. This zero-copy architecture increases efficiency, lowers energy consumption, and reduces end-to-end communication delays.

Virtualization and Cloud Infrastructure

Single Root I/O Virtualization allows physical network resources to be shared efficiently across multiple virtual machines. The ConnectX-4 adapter can expose numerous virtual functions, each behaving like an independent network interface.

Containerized Workload Optimization

Modern Kubernetes and container orchestration environments demand fast east-west traffic communication. The adapter accelerates pod-to-pod and node-to-node networking, supporting service mesh performance and distributed application scaling.

Hardware-based packet handling enhances container networking reliability while minimizing CPU overhead.

Network Function Virtualization

NFV platforms can use ConnectX-4 acceleration to improve software-defined firewalls, routers, load balancers, and security appliances. Offloading network-intensive operations increases packet throughput and lowers infrastructure costs.

Storage Networking Applications

The adapter is highly suitable for NVMe-oF deployments where ultra-fast access to remote storage resources is required. RDMA-enabled transport reduces latency to near-local disk levels, allowing high-performance storage arrays to operate at maximum efficiency.

Applications involving large transactional datasets or high-speed file processing benefit significantly from this capability.

Distributed Storage Clusters

Ceph, Lustre, BeeGFS, and similar distributed storage platforms depend on rapid network synchronization. The dual-port 100GbE design supports fast replication, failover, and parallel access to shared storage pools.

Backup and Data Protection Systems

Large-scale backup infrastructures can leverage the adapter’s bandwidth to accelerate snapshot transfers, disaster recovery replication, and long-term archival movement across geographically distributed systems.

GPU Workload Acceleration

The NVIDIA ConnectX-4 adapter supports GPUDirect RDMA, enabling direct communication between GPUs and network devices without routing data through host memory.

High-Performance Computing Environments

Scientific modeling, genomics, weather forecasting, and engineering simulations all require deterministic communication across many nodes. ConnectX-4 provides the communication reliability and speed needed for tightly synchronized parallel workloads.

Security and Data Integrity Features

The adapter includes secure firmware mechanisms that protect against unauthorized modifications and maintain system integrity across enterprise deployments.

Firmware validation procedures help organizations enforce hardware security policies and reduce infrastructure risk.

Traffic Isolation and Access Control

Advanced traffic filtering and partitioning capabilities improve network segmentation. Administrators can isolate workloads, prioritize traffic classes, and enforce access restrictions directly at the adapter level.

Error Detection and Reliability

Robust link monitoring and error correction mechanisms help maintain stable communication even under heavy utilization. Enterprise-grade reliability is essential for uninterrupted production operations.

Power Efficiency 

Despite delivering 100Gbps networking performance, the adapter is engineered for efficient power usage. Hardware offload reduces CPU demand, indirectly lowering total server energy consumption.

Energy-efficient networking becomes increasingly important in dense data centers where operational cost control is essential.

The card includes enterprise-grade thermal engineering to maintain stability during continuous high-load operation. Efficient heat dissipation supports sustained throughput without thermal throttling.

Scalability Benefits for Enterprise Growth

Deploying the NVIDIA ConnectX-4 VPI adapter helps organizations prepare for increasing network demands. As workloads grow and applications become more distributed, scalable 100Gb networking becomes a foundational infrastructure requirement.

Its support for both Ethernet and InfiniBand protects long-term investments and reduces future migration complexity.

Cloud Expansion Readiness

Hybrid cloud and private cloud deployments benefit from flexible high-speed interconnects that support rapid scaling. The adapter provides the networking foundation needed to expand compute and storage resources seamlessly.

Enterprise Networking Value

The 900-9X4AC-0056-ST3 NVIDIA ConnectX-4 VPI 100GbE Dual-Port QSFP28 PCIe Adapter Card represents a premium high-performance networking solution designed for organizations that require uncompromising speed, flexibility, and reliability. Combining Ethernet and InfiniBand versatility, advanced RDMA technologies, virtualization acceleration, and GPU-aware communication features, it serves as a critical infrastructure component for next-generation data centers and compute-intensive enterprise environments.

Its combination of scalable throughput, intelligent offloading, and protocol flexibility makes it one of the most capable enterprise network adapters available for organizations modernizing high-speed networking architectures.