IOctopus: Outsmarting Nonuniform DMA

In a multi-CPU server, memory modules are local to the CPU to which they are connected, forming a nonuniform memory access (NUMA) architecture. Because non-local accesses are slower than local accesses, the NUMA architecture might degrade application performance. Similar slowdowns occur when an I/O device issues nonuniform DMA (NUDMA) operations, as the device is connected to memory via a single CPU. NUDMA effects therefore degrade application performance similarly to NUMA effects.

We observe that the similarity is not inherent but rather a product of disregarding the intrinsic differences between I/O and CPU memory accesses. Whereas NUMA effects are inevitable, we show that NUDMA effects can and should be eliminated. We present IOctopus, a device architecture that makes NUDMA impossible by unifying multiple physical PCIe functions-one per CPU-in manner that makes them appear as one, both to the system software and externally to the server. IOctopus requires only a modest change to the device driver and firmware. We implement it on existing hardware and demonstrate that it improves throughput and latency by as much as 2.7× and 1.28×, respectively, while ridding developers from the need to combat (what appeared to be) an unavoidable type of overhead.

• Hardware → Communication hardware, interfaces and storage; • Software and its engineering → Operating systems; Input / output.