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Performance Analysis of Offloading Application-Layer Tasks to Network Processors

Soumya Mahadevan, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Document Type: Open Access

Degree Program

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Degree Type

Master of Science (M.S.)

Year Degree Awarded

2007

Month Degree Awarded

September

Primary Subject Category

Engineering

Secondary Subject Category

Computer science; Electrical engineering; Engineering

Keywords

network processors, web servers, offloading, performance analysis

Advisor(s) or Committee Chair

Wolf, Tilman

 

Abstract

Offloading tasks to a network processor is one of the important ways to increase server performance. Hardware offloading of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) intensive tasks is known to significantly improve performance. When the entire application is considered for offloading, the impact on the server can be significant because it significantly reduces the load on the server. The goal of this thesis is to consider such a system with application-level offloading, rather than hardware offloading, and gauge its performance benefits.

I am implementing this project on an Apache httpd server (running RedHat Linux), on a system that utilizes a co-located network processor system (IXP2855). The performance of the two implementations is measured using the SPECweb2005 benchmark, which is the accepted industry standard for evaluating Web server performance.

Recommended Citation

Mahadevan, Soumya, "Performance Analysis of Offloading Application-Layer Tasks to Network Processors" (2007). Masters Theses. Paper 50.
http://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/50