DPDK and MKL; Enabling technologies for near deterministic cloud-based signal processing

This work explores different means to implement software defined cellular radio over the cloud, which sets stringent real-time requirements. DPDK and MKL are two technologies proposed by Intel that can be used for that purpose. In this paper, we explore those technologies and using operating system isolation to reduce the computation time variability for LTE processes. It is found that MKL offers excellent performance, but as it is not scalable by itself over the cloud, combining it with DPDK is a very promising alternative. DPDK allows improving performance, memory management and makes MKL scalable.