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Comparison between 6WINDGate™ Profiles

The following graph illustrates the performance of the three 6WINDGate profiles, using IP forwarding with 64-Byte packets as an example.

Performance comparison between 6WINDGate Profiles

Which 6WINDGate profile is best suited to your application? The following table will help you evaluate the options.

	6WINDGate ADS	6WINDGate EDS	6WINDGate SDS
Slow Path and Control Plane	Linux SMP
Fast Path	None	Linux Kernel Module	MCEE Application
Protocol Implementation	Control Plane + Slow Path	Extended with Fast Path support Each protocol is split between Fast Path, Slow Path and Control Plane
Performances	Constrained by Linux architecture (no Fast Path)	Application and Fast Path share cores and the Fast Path performance is not guaranteed	Fast Path performance is guaranteed
Optimal configuration	1 to 2 cores	2 cores (more when no MCEE is available)	2+ cores (needs at least one core dedicated to Linux core)

• 6WINDGate ADS is a simple solution well adapted to small configurations (1 to 2 cores) with reasonable performance requirements but constrained by the Linux architecture (no Fast Path).
  
• 6WINDGate EDS is well adapted to configurations between 2 to 4 cores. If we take the example of a 2-core configuration, the 6WINDGate EDS Fast Path can run on both cores (SMP mode) while the 6WINDGate SDS Fast Path can only run on 1 core as the other is dedicated to Linux. So, even if 6WINDGate SDS has a higher performance per core, 6WINDGate EDS could provide a higher-performance solution. Note though that the 6WINDGate EDS software and the application (if any) share the same cores. As a result, the performance of the Fast Path is not guaranteed as it may compete with applications for the same processing resources. 6WINDGate EDS can also be an optimal solution for large configurations when no MCEE is available as performance reaches double 6WINDGate ADS performance.
  
• 6WINDGate SDS targets configurations with 4 or more cores with a Fast Path running on a large number of these cores. Although 6WINDGate EDS scales well on multiple cores, 6WINDGate SDS scales better as it does not rely on generic services provided by the Linux Operating System and it fully benefits from the limited but optimized services of the multicore environment (MCEE). As the Fast Path uses dedicated cores, performance is guaranteed. So, the performance difference between SDS and EDS improves as the number of cores increases, reaching 4 times for a 16-core configuration.
  

An Application Note about 6WINDGate SDS performance benchmarks is available here.

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