CS8803HPC : High Performance Communications

Embedded Computing MS Program – Korea University

Homework Assignment #2

Due date: Sunday, July 15^th, 11:59pm

Submission: via e-mail to ada@cc

Answer the following questions: (longer answers are not necessarily better)

1. Discuss the performance pros and cons of configuring a network interface to deliver an interrupt to the host after it receives a packet from the network vs. configuring the host protocol stack to explicitly poll the NIC for more data. Use at least three different performance criteria when making the comparisons.

2. The paper “Evaluating Network Processing Efficiency with Processor Partitioning and Asynchronous I/O” (www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2007/cs8803hpc_summer/papers/eta-aio.pdf) describes an asynchronous communication interface. Describe the steps involved in delivering a data item from the NIC through the PPE all the way to the appropriate buffer in the application’s address space.