Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S267354AbUIOUQ1 (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:16:27 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267360AbUIOUOS (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:14:18 -0400 Received: from e34.co.us.ibm.com ([32.97.110.132]:52438 "EHLO e34.co.us.ibm.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S267378AbUIOULb (ORCPT ); Wed, 15 Sep 2004 16:11:31 -0400 In-Reply-To: <4148991B.9050200@pobox.com> To: Netdev Cc: leonid.grossman@s2io.com, Linux Kernel , netdev@oss.sgi.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: The ultimate TOE design X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 6.0.2CF1 June 9, 2003 Message-ID: From: David Stevens Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 14:11:04 -0600 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D03NM121/03/M/IBM(Release 6.51HF338 | June 21, 2004) at 09/15/2004 14:11:11, Serialize complete at 09/15/2004 14:11:11 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1007 Lines: 22 I've never understood why people are so interested in off-loading networking. Isn't that just a multi-processor system where you can't use any of the network processor cycles for anything else? And, of course, to be cheap, the network processor will be slower, and much harder to debug and update software. If the PCI bus is too slow, or MTU's too small, wouldn't it be better to fix those directly and use a fast host processor that can also do other things when not needed for networking? And why have memory on a NIC that can't be used by other things? Why don't we off-load filesystems to disks instead? Or a graphics card that implements X ? :-) I'd rather have shared system resources-- more flexible. :-) +-DLS - 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/