Virtual-memorymapped network interfaces

Abstract

In today’s multicomputers, software overhead dominates the message-passing latency cost. We designed two multicomputer network interfaces that signif~cantiy reduce this overhead. Both support vMual-memory-mapped communication, allowing user processes to communicate without expensive buffer management and without making system calls across the protection boundary separating user processes from the operating system kerneL Here we compare the two interfaces and discuss the performance trade-offs between them