Analysis of a prototype intelligent network interface

With a focus on commodity PC systems, Beowulf clusters traditionally lack the cutting edge network architectures, memory subsystems, and processor technologies found in their more expensive supercomputer counterparts. Many users find that what Beowulf clusters lack in technology, they more than make up for with their significant cost advantage. In this paper, an architectural extension that adds reconfigurable computing to the network interface of Beowulf clusters is proposed. The proposed extension, called an intelligent network interface card (or INIC), enhances both the network and processor capabilities of the cluster, which has a significant impact on the performance of a crucial class of applications. Furthermore, for some applications, the proposed extension partially compensates for weaknesses in the PC memory subsystem. A prototype of the proposed architecture was constructed and analyzed. In addition, two applications, the 2D Fast Fourier Transform (2D-FFT) and integer sorting, which benefit from the resulting architecture, are discussed and analyzed on the proposed architecture. Specifically, results indicate that the 2D-FFT is performed 15–50% faster when using the prototype INIC rather than the comparable Gigabit Ethernet. Early simulation results also indicate that integer sorting will receive a 21– 32% performance boost from the prototype. The significant improvements seen with a relatively limited prototype lead to the conclusion that cluster network interfaces enhanced with reconfigurable computing could significantly improve the Beowulf architecture. Copyright c © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.