Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 02 Aug 2003 15:08:52 -0400 | From | Jeff Garzik <> | Subject | Re: TOE brain dump |
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My own brain dump:
If one wants to go straight from disk to network, why is anyone bothering to involve the host CPU and host memory bus at all? Memory bandwidth and PCI bus bandwidth are still bottlenecks, no much how much of the net stack you offload.
Regardless of how fast your network zooms packets, you've gotta keep that pipeline full to make use of it. And you've gotta do something intelligent with it, which in TCP's case involves the host CPU quite a bit. TCP is sufficiently complex, for a reason. It has to handle all manner of disturbingly slow and disturbing fast net connections, all jabbering at the same time. TCP is a "one size fits all" solution, but it doesn't work well for everyone.
The "TCP Offload Everything" people really need to look at what data your users want to push, at such high speeds. It's obviously not over a WAN... so steer users away from TCP, to an IP protocol that is tuned for your LAN needs, and more friendly to some sort of h/w offloading solution.
A "foo over ipv6" protocol that was designed for h/w offloading from the start, would be a far better idea than full TCP offload will ever be.
In any case, when you approach these high speeds, you really must take a good look at the other end of the pipeline: what are you serving at 10Gb/s, 20Gb/s, 40Gb/s? For some time, I think the answer will be "highly specialized stuff" At some point, Intel networking gear will be able to transfer more bits per second than there exist atoms on planet Earth :) Garbage in, garbage out.
So, fix the other end of the pipeline too, otherwise this fast network stuff is flashly but pointless. If you want to serve up data from disk, then start creating PCI cards that have both Serial ATA and ethernet connectors on them :) Cut out the middleman of the host CPU and host memory bus instead of offloading portions of TCP that do not need to be offloaded.
Jeff
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