Paper Info
Title
Improving network performance on multicore systems: Impact of core affinities on high throughput flows
Abstract
Network throughput is scaling-up to higher data rates while end-system processors are scaling-out to multiple cores. In order to optimize high speed data transfer into multicore end-systems, techniques such as network adaptor offloads and performance tuning have received a great deal of attention. Furthermore, several methods of multi-threading the network receive process have been proposed. However, thus far attention has been focused on how to set the tuning parameters and which offloads to select for higher performance, and little has been done to understand why the various parameter settings do (or do not) work. In this paper, we build on previous research to track down the sources of the end-system bottleneck for high-speed TCP flows. We define protocol processing efficiency to be the amount of system resources (such as CPU and cache) used per unit of achieved throughput (in Gbps). The amount of various system resources consumed are measured using low-level system event counters. In a multicore end-system, affinitization, or core binding, is the decision regarding how the various tasks of network receive process including interrupt, network, and application processing are assigned to the different processor cores. We conclude that affinitization has a significant impact on protocol processing efficiency, and that the performance bottleneck of the network receive process changes significantly with different affinitization.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1016/j.future.2015.09.012
Future Generation Computer Systems
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Networks,End-system bottleneck,Traffic shaping,GridFTP,Flow control,Congestion avoidance
Journal
56
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0167-739X
1
0.35
References 
Authors
16
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nathan Hanford1112.33
Vishal Ahuja2253.76
Matthew K. Farrens312.38
Dipak Ghosal42848163.40
Mehmet Balman514410.73
Eric Pouyoul68210.27
Brian Tierney761170.38