The three Intel Open Network Platform Switch reference design, codenamed ‘Seacliff Trail’; Intel Data Plane Development Kit (Intel DPDK) Accelerated Open vSwitch, and Intel Open Network Platform Server reference design, codenamed ‘Sunrise Trail’. According to Intel Integrating SDN and NFV on standard x86 platforms allows lowering the acquisition and management costs as well as enabling new services never before possible in networking infrastructure. SDN and NFV are critical elements of Intel's cunning plan to transform networks of today to a virtualised, programmable, standards-based architecture running commercial off-the-shelf hardware.
SDN and NFV are complementary networking technologies. By separating control and data planes, SDN allows the network to be programmed and managed externally at much larger and more dynamic scale for better traffic control across the entire data centre. NFV allows service providers to virtualise and manage networking functions such as firewall, VPN or intrusion detection service as virtual applications running on a high-volume x86-based server.