Coalescing Small Packets for Network Bandwidth Utilization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems in data centers and cloud systems face inefficiencies due to the high overhead and resource bottlenecks caused by small packets, which lead to suboptimal network link bandwidth utilization and increased latency, especially in handling fine-grain access patterns and big data analytics workloads.
Innovation Solution
A system that coalesces small packets destined for the same destination into a single larger packet on the transmit side, using a network architecture with arbiter and dispatch engines to manage queues and aggregate packets across multiple cores or nodes, reducing overhead and improving bandwidth utilization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If small packets are transmitted individually, then network communication simplicity is maintained, but network link bandwidth utilization deteriorates and overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple small packets into a single coalesced packet for transmission. The system groups small packets from multiple sources or destinations into aggregated packets, reducing the total number of transmissions required and improving bandwidth utilization while maintaining communication efficiency
2Speed
If small packets are transmitted individually, then transmission speed is maintained, but latency increases due to overhead
Solution Approach 1:
By combining multiple small packets into coalesced packets, the system reduces the cumulative overhead associated with individual packet transmissions. This merging approach decreases total latency while preserving transmission speed through optimized packet handling
3Productivity
If more resources are allocated to handle increased performance demands, then system performance improves, but resource consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges resource-intensive operations by coalescing packet handling into unified transmission units. This approach improves system performance by reducing the number of individual packet processing operations, thereby decreasing overall resource consumption including CPU cycles, memory usage, and I/O operations
4Productivity
If packet aggregation is implemented, then bandwidth utilization improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces intermediary components including a coalescing engine, arbitration logic, and buffer management structures that facilitate packet aggregation. These intermediaries handle the complexity of merging packets while presenting a simplified interface to the rest of the network system, thereby improving bandwidth utilization without excessively increasing overall device complexity
Data Source
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AI summary
Particular embodiments described herein provide for an electronic device that can be configured to group two or more small packets that are to be communicated to a common destination, where the two or more packets are grouped together in a queue dedicated to temporarily store small packets that are to be communicated to the common destination, coalesce the small packets into a coalesced packet, where the coalesced packet is a network packet, and communicate the coalesced packet to the common destination. In an example, the size of a small packet is a packet that is smaller than the network packet. In another example, the size of a small packet is less than half the size of the network packet.