SOSP2021

Automated SmartNIC Offloading Insights for Network Functions

Yiming Qiu, Jiarong Xing, Kuo-Feng Hsu, Qiao Kang, Ming Liu, Srinivas Narayana, Ang Chen

37 citations

Abstract

The gap between CPU and networking speeds has motivated the development of SmartNICs for NF (network functions) offloading. However, offloading performance is predicated upon intricate knowledge about SmartNIC hardware and careful hand-tuning of the ported programs. Today, developers cannot easily reason about the offloading performance or the effectiveness of different porting strategies without resorting to a trial-and-error approach.