An Evaluation of TCP and UDP Protocols Processing Required for Network Interface Design at 100 Gbps

Today major challenges are faced by server platforms while performing TCP/IP or UDP/IP protocol processing. For instance, the speed of networks now exceeds the gigabit per sec Gbps, the design and implementations of high-performance Network Interfaces (NI) have become very challenging. There are different possible design approaches to implement high-speed NI. However, using the General Purpose Processing (GPP) as a core engine to offload some, if not all, of the TCP/IP or UDP/IP protocol functions can deliver some important features to NIs, such as simplicity, scalability, shorter developing cycle time and reduced costs. Still it is not clear whether the GPP can provide the processing required for high-speed line over 10 Gbps. Also, where is the limit of such GPP in supporting the processing of network interfaces? In this paper, we have measured the amount of processing required for Ethernet Network Interfaces (ENI) design supporting different transmission line speeds. A NI-programmable based RISC model has been designed to measure the processing required for the ENI|. The results have shown that a RISC core running at 240 MHz can be used as a processing core in high-speed ENI. Such core can support a wide range of transmission line speeds, up to 100 Gbps. Also, we have discussed some of the design issues that are related to RISC core based NI and the data movement type.