Design and evaluation of network interfaces for system area networks
Shubhendu S. Mukherjee, Mark D. Hill · 1998
Much of a computer's communication performance is determined by how well it interacts with networks. Such interaction is critical for latency-sensitive applications, such as parallel programs that send frequent, short messages. Fortunately, networks have improved dramatically, especially System Area Networks (SANs). SANs provide submicrosecond latency, gigabytes per second bandwidth, and very high reliability to 10-100 hosts. Unfortunately, this dramatic improvement in network performance is seldom delivered to applications. A key bottleneck is the host network interface (NI), which connects a network to a host computer. For example, conventional NIs are usually accessed via direct memory access or uncached, memory-mapped device registers, which can incur latencies between ten and hundreds of microseconds. This thesis investigates novel techniques to improve interactions between a processor and a SAN NI. A key principle underlies these techniques: treat NI access as regular, sideeffec...