|
Application Note: Multicore Meets Growing Demand for High
Performance Packet Processing
At the beginning of the design phase of
equipment, one of the most important designers' phases
is to evaluate a complete configuration of fully operational
packet processing software. This is to gage the real application's
performance as to how it will run on the selected MC hardware.
The main questions to be answered are:
- What is the impact, in a full-featured implementation,
of all the required protocols on the system's performance?
- How modular is the implementation, to perform only
the necessary processing for a dedicated application
and progressively introduce new features without redesigning
the software?
- What is the impact on global performance after the
integration of Data Plane functions with the Control
Plane?
- How does performance scale over the number of cores?
6WIND has made available an Application
Note dissecting such issues. This Application Note shows
that only a Fast Path-based architecture integrating a
large number of protocols is able to fulfill the requirements
of real equipment. It also scales linearly on a large
number of cores.
The Application Note analyzes performance
benchmarks. IP forwarding performance benchmarks are a
good starting point but benchmarks on a stand alone implementation
that is not designed to integrate the required additional
protocols are not sufficient. Only performance benchmarks
made on a complete implementation are relevant.
This Application Note also provides detailed
information about performance for well-known protocols
such as L2 / L3 encapsulation, IPsec, NAT & firewall
and a method to evaluate the performance of a complete
networking layer.
The complete Application Note is
available here.
Online Multicore
Packet Processing Forum
In September, 6WIND began a dedicated online
Multicore Packet Processing Forum to provide
the community with the latest information and resources
about networking and telecommunications applications,
and embedded multicore networking software.
The first weeks of the Forum have been very
productive with high quality posts by experts from industry
market leaders including Cavium Networks, Netlogic, Nokia
Siemens Networks and 6WIND. You will find information
on a large range of hot topics including:
- Multicore packet processing at the heart of convergence
- Advantages and disadvantages of multi-threading in
next-generation multicore processors
- Virtualization for network-based multicore telecommunication
systems
- Multicore packet processing - performance benchmarks
- Why standard OS networking stacks, like Linux's,
are not well adapted to multicore packet processing?
Thanks in advance for visiting this Forum.
If you would like to contribute to the Forum, you are
more than welcomed. Please use the online submission
form or e-mail: contact@multicorepacketprocessing.com.
CompactPCI &
ATCA Newsletter Article - November Issue
The November issue of CompactPCI & ATCA email newsletter
includes 6WIND's CEO article, "Multicore-Based
AdvancedTCA architectures: High availability key in networking
layer". It discusses the impact of equipment
high availability requirements on a multicore based networking
layer.
Embedded Computing
Design Article - November Issue
The November issue of Embedded Computing Design includes
6WIND's CEO article, "Multicore
progressively powers networking equipment with high-performance
software". It explains how advanced network
services can be initially implemented without any Fast
Path and progressively introduced at the Fast Path level
as bandwidth and performance increases. This approach
is particularly effective in implementing incremental
cost-effective development steps for network and telecommunications
equipment.
|
