Subject: [arch-d] NIC Offload Affect

From: "Bound, Jim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:30:46 -0500

If we should add new architecture components when thinking of
implementation and time to market do we consider that NICs will offload
the IP stack from current OS IP stacks for some use cases and already in
process. I believe for 10GbE OS stacks can keep up but when 100GbE
happens that will be different. Optimal IP stack code base has a
different slant, and that can affect the deployment of any architecture
too.  Or it can be ignored?  Just food for thought up in the sky looking
down.

/jim

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From: Tony Li <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 21:45:18 -0800

> too.  Or it can be ignored?  Just food for thought up in the sky  

In a distant previous life, I spent some time hacking the CMU TCP  
stack for
VMS to work with a vendor's TCP accelerator board because everyone  
'knew'
that general purpose CPUs could never, ever keep up with 10Mb/s.  ;-)

While I'm painfully aware that general purpose silicon is reaching a  
technology
asymptote, I would strongly suggest that we work hard to NOT optimize  
around
a particular generation of technology and open ourselves to the  
thought that
whatever we do, our grandchildren will have to implement the result  
on their
latest and greatest Mr. Fusion powered, LOX cooled, hyper-processor.

Tony

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From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:58:36 -0800

> While I'm painfully aware that general purpose silicon is reaching  
> a technology
> asymptote, I would strongly suggest that we work hard to NOT  
> optimize around

I agree.

Further, from one of my previous lives, the bottleneck was  
efficiently moving the data to user space, not the actual protocol  
processing.  Moving the protocol processing outboard tends to make  
this harder as it moves the control further away from where it is  
needed.

Bob