Software-Based Communication Latency Hiding for Commodity Workstation Networks

A variety of latency hiding techniques has been investigated at the hardware level. However, except multithreading, which may require substantial program structuring effort, other software-based latency hiding methods have not been investigated. In this paper, we consider design alternatives for latency hiding other than multithreading. Furthermore, we present experimental evidence for the validity of a new technique for software-based communication latency hiding for commodity workstation networks: Up to 80 percent of useful computational power can be squeezed out of a workstation CPU while communicating with TCP/IP via an Ethernet and almost 90 percent while communicating across the Internet.