Cybersecurity firm Fortinet Inc. today announced FortiSP5, new application-specific integrated circuit technology that promises to accelerate the convergence of networking and security across every network edge.
Built on over 20 years of ASIC investment and innovation from Fortinet, FortiSP5 is said to deliver secure computing power advantages over traditional central processing units and network ASICs. The new chip promises lower costs and power consumption along with the ability to enable new secure infrastructure across branches, campuses, 5G, edge, operational technologies and more.
FortiSP5 is built with an application-specific design and embedded multi-core processors to accelerate the convergence of networking and security functions. The custom ASIC chip is claimed to deliver 17x faster firewall performance compared to leading standard CPUs, 3.5x faster next-generation firewall performance compared to leading standard CPUs and 32x quicker encryption.
The chip offers 2.5 Gbps of Secure Sockets Layer deep inspection to deliver the processing power needed to inspect encrypted traffic for malware without performance issues. Secure boot with FortiSP5 allows only approved operating system software to boot up, protecting critical infrastructure against malicious tampering and volumetric distributed denial-of-service protection to thwart DDoS attacks.
VXLAN/GRE hardware-accelerated encapsulation with FortiSP5 enables secure interconnectivity for distributed networks, while hardware-accelerated Quality of Service enhances the user experience with dedicated QoS for sensitive applications such as videoconferencing.
In the age of increasing power costs and concern over climate change, FortiSP5 offers 88% less power consumption compared to the leading industry standard CPU. Fortinet also claims that the chip delivers industry-leading performance per watt and price performance.
“The energy efficiency and performance per watt of FortiSP5 and the products that leverage the chip will help organizations reduce their power and space requirements,” Fortinet said in a statement. “Fortinet remains committed to sustainable product innovation to ensure each generation of its products consumes less energy and is built sustainably.”
The chip also supports more applications and can run 2x more applications concurrently than previous models. FortiSP5 will power the next generation of entry and mid-range FortiGate firewalls being released later this year.
