Virtual Memory Mapped Network Interface for the SHRIMP Multicomputer

Abstract:

The network interfaces of existing multicomputers require a significant amount
of software overhead at the operating system and user levels to provide
protection and to implement message passing protocols. This paper describes
the design of a low-latency, high-bandwidth, virtual memory-mapped network
interface for the SHRIMP multicomputer project at Princeton University.
Without sacrificing protection, the network interface achieves low latency by
using virtual memory mapping and write-latency hiding techniques, and obtains
high bandwidth by providing a user-level block data transfer mechanism. We
have implemented several message passing primitives in an experimental
environment, demonstrating that our approach can reduce the message passing
overhead to a few user-level instructions.

This technical report has been published as

Virtual Memory Mapped Network Interface for the SHRIMP
Multicomputer. Matthias A. Blumrich, Kai Li, Richard
D. Alpert, Cezary Dubnicki, Edward W. Felten, and
Jonathan S. Sandberg, ISCA '94