Chelsio Terminator 3 (T3) iSCSI Offload Adapters
Hardware iSCSI offload support for Chelsio's third-generation Terminator (T3) 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters, which let storage traffic bypass the host TCP/IP stack. Chelsio introduced the T3 silicon in 2006 and was still shipping T3-based PCIe Gen2 and 10GBASE-T cards as late as 2009; the family targeted enterprise SAN and unified-fabric deployments.
recommendation
A candidate for future removal because the T3 hardware is roughly two decades old, Chelsio has moved on through T4, T5, T6, and now T7 generations and lists T3 only on its archive downloads page, and the in-tree code has seen no real feature work in years (only a 2023 SCSI cleanup and mechanical 2025 treewide edits). Anyone still using Chelsio iSCSI offload on newer cards is served by the cxgb4i driver, so cxgb3i mainly exists for legacy installs.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Last clearly non-treewide upstream touch affecting cxgb3i.c was a 2023 linux-scsi maintenance patch, indicating very low subsystem-specific activity.
- lore.kernel.org
Most recent 2025 touch on cxgb3i.c was part of a large treewide timer API rename, not evidence of active feature work or user-driven maintenance.
- chelsio.com
Chelsio's current ASIC/product lineup highlights newer Terminator generations (T5/T6/T7), with no current T3 offering shown.
- service.chelsio.com
Chelsio classifies Terminator 3 firmware and EEPROM packages under archive downloads with dates concentrated in 2007, consistent with legacy status.
- chelsio.com
Chelsio was still announcing new T3-based adapters in 2009, which is a reasonable upper bound for broad new-market availability.
- chelsio.com
Terminator 3 was introduced in 2006 as Chelsio's third-generation 10GbE/iSCSI offload silicon, confirming the hardware generation is very old.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Driver directory is a real kernel driver: Kconfig says 'Chelsio T3 iSCSI support' and cxgb3i.c identifies itself as the Chelsio T3 iSCSI driver. `lore_file_timeline` on cxgb3i.c showed only treewide/mechanical 2025 edits plus the last substantive linux-scsi maintenance in March 2023; the attempted `lore_regex` removal-subject scan timed out, so there is no positive evidence of an active removal series, only sparse maintenance. Web search found Chelsio's current ASIC page (T5/T6/T7 only), Chelsio's archive-download page for T3 firmware, and 2006/2009 T3 announcement pages; together they indicate T3 is long obsolete and not a 2025 new-sales platform. Present deployments are likely legacy storage/offload installations only. `cxgb4i` is the natural upstream successor for the same Chelsio iSCSI offload niche, but only for newer hardware generations, so deprecate is stronger than keep-annotate but weaker than remove.