The BCM5708C provides a fully integrated Layer 4 and Layer 5 solution - TCP/IP, RDMA and iSCSI 1.0/iSER along with a complete 10/ 100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 802.3 compliant Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer Transceiver solution for high performance network applications. By itself, the BCM5708C provides a complete single-chip Gigabit Ethernet NIC with a TCP/IP Offload Engine, RDMA NIC (RNIC), iSCSI 1.0/iSER HBA or LOM solution. The BCM5708C is different from other network controllers because it can process the TCP/IP and relevant L5 protocols on data directly from the application buffers on the host, therefore relieving the host CPU from these time-consuming operations. On the receive path, the BCM5708C processes the frame up to the highest layer supported present in it, e.g., the BCM5708C processes the frame for RDMA when the frame is an RDMA frame. With the appropriate configuration, the BCM5708C can simultaneously support any two of the following three functions: • RDMA Network Interface Controller (RNIC) • iSCSI or iSER Host Bus Adapter • TOE Chimney-enabled network accelerator