Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S273068AbTHFBwi (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Aug 2003 21:52:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S273071AbTHFBwi (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Aug 2003 21:52:38 -0400 Received: from mailhost.NMT.EDU ([129.138.4.52]:32436 "EHLO mailhost.nmt.edu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S273068AbTHFBwh (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Aug 2003 21:52:37 -0400 Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 19:47:24 -0600 From: Val Henson To: Werner Almesberger Cc: Larry McVoy , David Lang , "Ihar 'Philips' Filipau" , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: TOE brain dump Message-ID: <20030806014724.GH11101@speare5-1-14> References: <20030804223800.P5798@almesberger.net> <20030805015401.GA15811@work.bitmover.com> <20030804233026.R5798@almesberger.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030804233026.R5798@almesberger.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-Favorite-Color: Polka dot Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1457 Lines: 37 On Mon, Aug 04, 2003 at 11:30:27PM -0300, Werner Almesberger wrote: > Larry McVoy wrote: > > I'd suggest that all of you look at the fact that all of these offload > > card companies have ended up dieing. I don't know of a single one that > > made it to profitability. Doesn't that tell you something? What has > > changed that makes this a good idea? > > 1) So far, most of the battle has been about data transfers. > Now, per-packet overhead is becoming an issue. > > 2) AFAIK, they all went for designs that isolated their code > from the main stack. That's one thing that, IMHO, has to > change. > > Is this enough to make TOE succeed ? I don't know. Jeff Mogul recently wrote an interesting paper called "TCP Offload is a Dumb Idea Whose Time Has Come": http://www.usenix.org/events/hotos03/tech/full_papers/mogul/mogul_html/ (It's 6 pages long and in HTML - easy to read.) After explaining why TCP offload is a dumb idea, he goes on to argue that *if* storage area networks are replaced with switched ethernet, and RDMA becomes popular, TCP offload might make sense for sending data to your disks. This is a good, short paper to read if you are interested in TOE for any reason. -VAL - 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/