Re: TOE brain dump

On Sad, 2003-08-02 at 18:04, Werner Almesberger wrote:

 - last but not least, keeping TOE firmware up to date with the
   TCP/IP stack in the mainstream kernel will require - for each
   such TOE device - a significant and continuous effort over a
   long period of time

or even the protocol and protocol refinements..

 - instead of putting a different stack on the TOE, a
   general-purpose processor (probably with some enhancements,
   and certainly with optimized data paths) is added to the NIC

Like say an opteron in the 2nd socket on the motherboard

Benefits:

 - putting the CPU next to the NIC keeps data paths short, and
   allows for all kinds of optimizations (e.g. a pipelined
   memory architecture)

It moves the cost it doesnt make it vanish

If I read you right you are arguing for a second processor running
Linux.with its own independant memory bus. AMD make those already its
called AMD64. I don't know anyone thinking at that level about
partitioning one as an I/O processor.