Enabling programmable transport protocols in high-speed NICs

Mina Tahmasbi Arashloo, Alexey Lavrov, Manya Ghobadi, Jennifer Rexford, David Walker, David Wentzlaff

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

70 Scopus citations

Abstract

Data-center network stacks are moving into hardware to achieve 100 Gbps data rates and beyond at low latency and low CPU utilization. However, hardwiring the network stack in the NIC would stifle innovation in transport protocols. In this paper, we enable programmable transport protocols in high-speed NICs by designing Tonic, a flexible hardware architecture for transport logic. At 100 Gbps, transport protocols must generate a data segment every few nanoseconds using only a few kilobits of per-flow state on the NIC. By identifying common patterns across transport logic of different transport protocols, we design an efficient hardware “template” for transport logic that satisfies these constraints while being programmable with a simple API. Experiments with our FPGA-based prototype show that Tonic can support the transport logic of a wide range of protocols and meet timing for 100 Gbps of back-to-back 128-byte packets. That is, every 10 ns, our prototype generates the address of a data segment for one of more than a thousand active flows for a downstream DMA pipeline to fetch and transmit a packet.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 17th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2020
PublisherUSENIX Association
Pages93-109
Number of pages17
ISBN (Electronic)9781939133137
StatePublished - 2020
Event17th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2020 - Santa Clara, United States
Duration: Feb 25 2020Feb 27 2020

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 17th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2020

Conference

Conference17th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation, NSDI 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Clara
Period2/25/202/27/20

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Control and Systems Engineering

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