Title
On limitations of network acceleration
Abstract
The performance of large-scale data-intensive applications running on thousands of machines depends considerably on the performance of the network. To deliver better application performance on rapidly evolving high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects, researchers have proposed the use of network accelerator devices. However, despite the initial enthusiasm, translating network accelerator's capabilities into high application performance remains a challenging issue. In this paper, we describe our experience and discuss issues that we uncover with network acceleration using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) capable network controllers (RNICs). RNICs offload the complete packet processing into network controllers, and provide direct userspace access to the networking hardware. Our analysis shows that multiple (un)related factors significantly influence the performance gains for the end-application. We identify factors that span the whole stack, ranging from low-level architectural issues (cache and DMA interaction, hardware pre-fetching) to the high-level application parameters (buffer size, access pattern). We discuss implications of our findings upon application performance and the future of integration of network acceleration technology within the systems.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1145/2535372.2535412
CoNEXT
Keywords
Field
DocType
high application performance,network acceleration,network controller,better application performance,network acceleration technology,capable network controller,network accelerator,application performance,network accelerator device,performance gain,cache coherence,performance
Cache,Computer science,Networking hardware,Computer network,Packet processing,Ranging,Acceleration,Hardware acceleration,Remote direct memory access,Embedded system,Cache coherence
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
17
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Animesh Trivedi1745.69
Bernard Metzler2897.72
Patrick Stuedi326118.76
Thomas R. Gross42807404.74