Partial Coalescing of Transmit Buffers to Reduce Network Overhead
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Solution Overview
Problem
Network devices face performance issues due to the inefficiencies in handling small amounts of data scattered across multiple buffers and excessive coalescing of data into single buffers, leading to processing overhead that can decrease network throughput.
Innovation Solution
The solution involves partially coalescing transmit buffers by analyzing packets and combining smaller buffers into larger contiguous ones, optimizing buffer management to improve network throughput without excessive processing overhead.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Quantity of substance
If data is scattered in several small buffers, then memory utilization is improved, but network device performance deteriorates due to multiple buffer accesses
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple small data buffers into a single larger buffer structure that the network device can access in one operation. This merging eliminates the performance penalty of multiple separate buffer accesses while maintaining efficient memory utilization through the consolidated buffer management approach.
2Productivity
If all data is coalesced into a single buffer, then network device performance is improved, but processing overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial coalescing rather than complete coalescing of all buffers. It selectively combines buffers based on criteria such as data size and buffer characteristics, achieving sufficient performance improvement without the excessive processing overhead that would result from coalescing every buffer into a single structure.
3Ease of operation
If interrupt is issued after fixed number of bytes received, then processing simplicity is improved, but responsiveness to actual packet completion deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements an interrupt mechanism that provides feedback about actual packet reception status. Instead of relying solely on fixed byte counts, the system monitors actual packet completion and adjusts interrupt timing accordingly, maintaining simplicity while improving responsiveness to real packet boundaries.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention facilitates overall system performance by balancing system resource utilization and network throughput. The invention analyzes packets received from host software selects one or more of buffers to coalesce into a single, coalesced buffer. The selection is based upon an initial fragment size selected to facilitate overall system performance. The coalesced buffer and non-coalesced buffers, are passed to a network device for transmission.