Ideas Ideas Ideas...

A while ago I was looking at TCP offload engines (TOE) and I thought it was a very interesting idea.

TCP Offload engines have been around for a while. Basically what they do is take processing load off of the CPU by taking the entire TCP/IP stack and processing it within the network controller. Why would you want this?

The rule for any telecomms system at the moment is that to transmit one bit of information to another system takes 1 hertz. When you're transmitting 1000bits (125bytes), this is only 1000hertz, which ain't so bad. However when you scale this up, it gets very large indeed and you'd barely believe how much processing power it takes away from you when you're trying to do other work at the same time and it will inevitably bring the system to a stand still until the transmission is complete. When you think of the likes Gigabit ethernet (1000,000,000 bits per second), this will take 1GHz of processing power from your PC which could be used for gaming or other processing intense programs. This is only in half duplex (single direction). Full Duplex would be twice this which is up to 80% of your systems current capabilities.

The problem with the TCP offload engines is that they are difficult to use and hard to customise to each system. If the telecomms system changes, it will need to be re-programmed to the specific system. This is awkward unless you're using the same system the whole time.

Dell have actually brought systems out in their ninth generation PowerEdge servers.
For more information on TCP OE, check out wikipedias site here.