CAREER: High-Performance Packet Processing with Programmable NIC Data-Planes

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In today's data centers, network performance is surging, outstrippingthe capacity of modern processors, and turning them into a performancebottleneck for demanding data center applications. Examples ofapplications suffering from this problem include the back end servicesimplementing Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other popularwebsites. These services spend most of their time conducting networkinput/output. As the gap between processor and network performance widens,these services become less and less efficient. More efficient serversoftware can ameliorate the situation, increasing the performance ofapplications while also reducing a data center's prodigious energyconsumption.This project investigates a re-design of the server hardware andsoftware network stack, with the aim to streamline and improve networkI/O energy-efficiency. To do so, the project utilizes a newprogramming model for energy-efficient packet processing in networkcards, called match-and-action processing. The approach allowsapplications and operating systems to install packet processing rulesto the network card that instruct it to execute simple operations onpackets while transferring them to and from the host. This model ishighly energy efficient, yet allows to retain network protocolimplementation flexibility and compatibility with existingapplications.The work has the potential for dramatic improvements in applicationand server performance, as well as data center energyconsumption. Network intensive data center applications are used bybillions of people around the globe on a daily basis. By reducing theoverhead of networking, the hardware needed to support existingservices can be reduced, making it cheaper for new services to bedeveloped.To evaluate the space of design alternatives, the project builds aworking prototype and an emulator capable of running standard serverapplications. All source code, along with configuration files andinstructions for reproducing published measurements of the system,will be made public and accessible from the project website at UTAustin (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~simon/flexnic). The website will beactively maintained for the duration of the project.