Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S270627AbTHETPj (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Aug 2003 15:15:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S270629AbTHETPj (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Aug 2003 15:15:39 -0400 Received: from kinesis.swishmail.com ([209.10.110.86]:19983 "HELO kinesis.swishmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S270627AbTHETPh (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Aug 2003 15:15:37 -0400 Message-ID: <3F300549.60800@techsource.com> Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 15:28:09 -0400 From: Timothy Miller User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Larry McVoy CC: David Lang , Erik Andersen , Werner Almesberger , Jeff Garzik , netdev@oss.sgi.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Nivedita Singhvi Subject: Re: TOE brain dump References: <20030803194011.GA8324@work.bitmover.com> <20030803203051.GA9057@work.bitmover.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1508 Lines: 37 Larry McVoy wrote: > On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 01:13:24PM -0700, David Lang wrote: > >>2. router nodes that have access to main memory (PCI card running linux >>acting as a router/firewall/VPN to offload the main CPU's) > > > I can get an entire machine, memory, disk, > Ghz CPU, case, power supply, > cdrom, floppy, onboard enet extra net card for routing, for $250 or less, > quantity 1, shipped to my door. > > Why would I want to spend money on some silly offload card when I can get > the whole PC for less than the card? Physical space? Power usage? Heat dissipation? Optimization for the specific task? Fast, low latency communication between CPU and device (ie. local bus)? Maintenance? Lots of reasons why one might pay more for the offload card. If you're cheap, you'll just use the software stack and a $10 NIC and just live with the corresponding CPU usage. If you're a performance freak, you'll spend whatever you have to to squeeze out every last bit of performance you can. Mind you, another option is, if you're dealing with the kind of load that requires that much network performance, is to use redundant servers, like google. No one server is exceptionally fast, but it not many people are using it, it's fast enough. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/