Network I/O Acceleration in Heterogeneous Multicore Processors

Abstract

Chip multiprocessor (CMP) architectures are fast becoming the dominant design for general purpose processors. Whereas current generation server and desktop processors use homogenous CMP architectures, network processors (NPs) have used heterogeneous CMP architectures for years. At the same time, the failure of network stacks in traditional processors to scale with increased network bandwidths has spawned numerous proposals for new approaches to accelerate network processing. This paper looks at moving network stack processing from the main CPU to a series of smaller, closely coupled, and more efficient processors in a heterogeneous CMP by implementing such an architecture on an Intel IXP network processor. Our experiments show that the close coupling and flexible nature of the IXP's microengines allow them to greatly accelerate network processing for a small cost in area