Virtual-Memory-Mapped Network Interfaces

Matthias A. Blumrich, Cezary Dubnicki, Edward W. Felten, Kai Li, Malena R. Mesarina

Abstract: In today's multicomputers, software overhead dominates the message-passing latency cost. We designed two multicomputer network interfaces that significantly reduce this overhead. Both support virtual-memory-mapped communication, allowing user processes to communicate without expensive buffer management and without making system calls across the protection boundary separating user processes from the operating system kernel. Here we compare the two interfaces and discuss the performance trade-offs between them.<