A high-performance host interface for ATM networks
C. Brendan S. Traw, Jonathan M. Smith · 1991
The advent of high speed networks has increased demands on processor architectures.These architectural demands are due to the increase in network bandwidth relative to the speeds of processor components.One impottant component for a balanced system is the workstation-to-network ho,u inlerjface.Our solution migrates a carefully selected set of protocol processing functions into hardware.It connects an IBM RS/6000 workstation to a Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) STS-3c~line carrying fmedsize Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) cells.The host interface described in this paper is highly parallel and a pure hardware solution to maximize performance.The~is a clean separation between the interface functions, such as segmentation and reassembly, and the interfacelhost communication.This separation eases porting the interface to other workstation plafforms.We intend to use this interface (and its successors) as a component of the AURORA gigabit per second (Gbps) testbed.