Benefits of TCP/IP Offload NICs

[hbomber]

Does anyone know how to quantify (in CPU terms) the benefit of a TOE NIC?

In particular, I am thinking for the Storage, database, webserver, and distributed computing applications (any others)?

any links as well?

thanks,
Harlan

 

[Dev]

The rule of thumb wit TCP/IP networking is that it takes 1Hz of CPU power to process 1bps. So Ethernet at full speed takes 10Mhz of CPU power (20Mhz for full duplex), Fastethernet takes 100/200Mhz, Gigabit Ethernet 1/2GHz etc.

TOE takes this load from the cpu to a special ASIC (Appliction Specific Integrated Circuit) that does TCP/IP Processing in near wirespeed. Thus a servers CPU is left to do other work and only process higher layer traffic.

A decent pdf can be found here: http://www.10gea.org/SP0502IntroToTOE_F.pdf

---
I want my epitaph to be: "Moved to /dev/null"