Network interface data caching

Network interface data caching reduces local interconnect traffic on network servers by caching frequently-requested content on a programmable network interface. The operating system on the host CPU determines which data to store in the cache and for which packets it should use data from the cache. To facilitate data reuse across multiple packets and connections, the cache only stores application-level response content (such as HTTP data), with application-level and networking headers generated by the host CPU. Network interface data caching reduces PCI traffic by 12-61 percent for six Web workloads on a prototype implementation of a uniprocessor Web server. This traffic reduction improves peak throughput for three workloads by 6-36 percent.