ProOnE: A General-Purpose Protocol Onload Engine Formulti-And Many-Core Architectures

Modern high-end computing systems utilize specialized offload engines to enhance various aspects of their processing. For example, high-speed networks such as InfiniBand, Quadrics and Myrinet utilize specialized hardware to offload network processing to help improve performance. However, such hardware units are expensive, and their manufacturing complexity increases exponentially depending on the number and complexity of tasks they offload. On the other hand, the proliferation of multi- and many-core processors into the general desktop and laptop markets is increasingly driving their cost down due to the economies of scale. To take advantage of the obvious benefits of multi/many-core architectures, the authors propose, design and evaluate ProOnE, a general purpose Protocol Onload Engine.