SPLITS Stream Handlers: Deploying Application-level Services to Attached Network Processor
Abstract
Modern distributed applications utilize a rich variety of distributed services.
Due to the computation-centric notions of modern machines, application-level
implementations of these services are problematic for applications requiring high data transfer rates,
for reasons that include the inability of modern architectures to efficiently execute computations with
communication. Conversely,network-level implementations of services are limited due to the
network's inability to interpret application-level data or execute application-level
operations on such data. The emergence of programmable network processors capable of
high-rate data transfers, with flexible interfaces for external reconfiguration,
has created new possibilities for movement of processing into the network
infrastructure.
This thesis explores the extent to which programmable network processors
can be used in conjunction with standard host nodes, to form enhanced computational
host-ANP (Attached Network Processor) platforms that can deliver increased efficiency
for variety of applications and services.
The main contributions of this research are the creation of SPLITS, a
Software architecture for Programmable LIghtweighT Stream handling, and
its key abstraction stream handlers. SPLITS enables the dynamic configuration
of data paths through the host-ANP nodes, and the dynamic creation, deployment and
reconfiguration of application-level processing applied along these paths. With SPLITS,
application-specific services can be dynamically mapped to the host, ANP, or both,
to best exploit their joint capabilities. The basic abstraction used by SPLITS to
represent instances of application-specific activities are stream handlers - parameterizable,
lightweight, computation units that operate on data headers as well as application-level
content. Experimental results demonstrate performance gains of executing various
application-level services on ANPs, and demonstrate the importance of the SPLITS
host-ANP nodes to support dynamically reconfigurable services, and to deal with
the resource limitations on the ANPs.