Re: [ethmac] FW: new ethernet adapter

[Kent Dahlgren <kent@praesum.com>]

At 03:58 AM 4/12/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Putting a TCP/IP stack in hardware will definitely give you a speed
>boost.  It's not a new idea though...
>
>http://www.techweb.com/se/directlink.cgi?EET20000410S0007
>
> > SAN MATEO, CALIF. - In a move that could dramatically improve the
> > performance end users see in networks, a startup this week will unveil 
> a radical
> > network adapter that it claims increases data throughput eightfold.
> >
> > Alacritech Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) was founded by Larry Boucher, who also
> > established Adaptec Inc. Boucher wants to reinvent the network 
> interface the
> >  way SCSI redefined hard-disk controllers.
> >
> > Seeing that the server had become a bottleneck in local-area networking,
> > Boucher started Alacritech in 1997 to create the session layer 
> interface card
> > (SLIC) for Windows NT servers. Based on a custom processor optimized for
> > Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol work, SLICs handle up 
> to 512
> > simultaneous TCP/IP sessions.

The problem has always been that these coprocessors have never given much in
the way of bang for the buck. In addition they tend to focus on off loading 
protocol
processing overhead from the host. If you really want to increase 
performance you
need to attack the fundamental problem and that is latency. So if you 
really want
do something slick and cool with this MAC provide VIA support.

Kent
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