Making TCP Viable as a High Performance Computing Protocol
Patricia Gilfeather, Arthur B. ‘Barney’ Maccabe · 2002
Generally, TCP is reputed to be too slow and bloated to be useful in high performance computing. However, it has very definite advantages over proprietary or special-ized protocols and could potentially be very useful in high performance computing. We researched different implemen-tations of MPI over TCP to distinguish between the limita-tions of TCP and the limitations of implementations of MPI over TCP. Next, we describe a new approach to address-ing the limitations of TCP: splintering. In contrast to OS bypass, the principle of splintering isn’t that the operating system shouldn’t be used, but that it should be used effec-tively. Finally, we describe the approach we will take in splintering processing for TCP packets. 1