On the Design and Semantics of User-Space Communication Subsystems.
Thomas M. Warschko, Joachim M. Blum, Walter F. Tichy · 1999
The problem with Gbit/s networks is to get the hardware performance into the applications. The most promising technique is a zero-copy protocol combined with a user-space communication subsystem that (a) gives the application direct access to the network interface and (b) avoids all buffering /copying. In this paper we examine the design space of user-space communication subsystems, especially how send and receive operations work and which communication semantics they imply. Furthermore, we propose a technique called page-exchange which avoids copy operations, is well defined, and has communication semantics equivalent to those of standard programming interfaces such as UNIX sockets, PVM, or MPI. Keywords: User-Space Communication, ZeroCopy Protocols, High-Speed Interconnects, HighPerformance Cluster Computing. 1 Introduction Modern high-speed networks, such as Myrinet [5], allow cost effective high-performance clusters to be built from commodity PCs and workstations. Traditional com...