On Fri Nov 21 12:31:13 EST 2014, ba...@bitblocks.com wrote: > This paper is well worth reading: > http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/1988Analysis%20TCP%20Processing%20Overhead.pdf > > While the traditional BSD implementation uses mbufs that complicate things, > actual tcp processing can be done quite cheaply.
- ignores tcp checksum -- it alone will take a couple cycles per byte. - ignores locking and i believe they've used the BKL to avoid locking any data structures, otherwise how could they process ip in 61 instructions? actually there's proof of this in the timer instruction count -- 17. that's not enough to acquire a lock. - asserts that 300 instructions of x86 code -> 400 instructions of risc code, conservatively absolutely not if one of them is rep; movb (which they appear to use) in short, i see signs that this paper is not realistic. furthermore, this sunny picture assumes an environment where tcp isn't giving any benefit. if you're not retransmitting a bit, you're not getting anything out of tcp. i think this was the original point. - erik