Patent Description:
Every computer included in a data network, operating either as a client or as a server, requires a network interface card (hereinafter "NIC") in order to access the network. A NIC is usually a separate adapter card that is mounted onto one of the server's motherboard expansion slots. However, most newer computers have the NIC built into the motherboard, in which case a separate card is not required.

For a client computer, one may use an inexpensive built-in NIC, because a client computer is used to connect only one user to the network, contrary to the use of a NIC in a server computer which connects many network users to the server.

Smart NICs may be used in cloud data center servers to boost performance by offloading CPUs in servers by performing network datapath processing. With the recent shift in cloud data center networking driven by software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV), a new class of offload NIC is needed - namely a smart NIC.

Specifically, there are three major reasons for which a smart offload NIC, or a smart NIC, would be required:.

Data networking involves both hardware and software. On the software side, networking protocols are often designed for current (or near-term) hardware capabilities. Protocols often become widely adapted while at the same time networking hardware improves. Processors become more efficient while communication mediums gain reliability and increased capacity. However, over time, networking protocols may become less suitable for the hardware that is being developed.

Moreover, some capabilities of networking hardware have not been fully appreciated and realized. Smart NICs, for example FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) NICs, have become more common. These newer interfaces, like traditional NICs, provide physical and media connectivity. They also include additional processing capability, sometimes in the form of reconfigurable circuitry (e.g., FPGAs). These processing-augmented NICs may allow features of some protocols to be offloaded from the host's CPU (Central Processing Unit) to the NIC. Some smart NICs may even allow an entire transport protocol to be fully offloaded from a host's CPU to the smart NIC. However, this approach often requires significant host-side changes. For example, host-side software might need to be re-written in order to enable communicating directly with its NIC via a custom application programming interface (API) rather than via a standard transport protocol.

<CIT> describes a smart NIC with features that enable the smart NIC to operate as an in-line NIC between a host's NIC and a network. The smart NIC provides pass-through transmission of network flows for the host so that packets sent to and from the host would pass through the smart NIC. As a pass-through point, the smart NIC is able to accelerate performance of the pass-through network flows by analyzing packets, inserting packets, dropping packets, inserting or recognizing congestion information, and the like.

However, the main bottleneck in network applications is generally the I/O bandwidth. In a case wherein NICs are installed in servers, it is the PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) bandwidth that limits the maximal throughput of the system. A conventional PCI is a local computer bus used for connecting hardware devices in a computer. PCI is part of the PCI Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format that is independent of any particular processor's native bus.

The present disclosure seeks to solve the drawbacks described above. <CIT> relates to detecting and mitigating network intrusions. Local inspection of packets may be performed by reconfigurable/reprogrammable "smart" network interfaces (NICs) at each of the hosts. Local inspection involves identifying potentially suspect packet features based on statistical prevalence of recurring commonalities among the packets; pre-defined threat patterns are not required. For network-wide coherence, each host/NIC uses the same packet-identifying and occurrence-measuring algorithms. An overlay or control server collects and combines the local occurrence-measures to derive the network-wide occurrence-measures. The network-wide occurrences can be used to automatically detect and mitigate completely new types of attack packets. <CIT> discloses a method for offloading packet encapsulation for an overlay network. The method, at a virtualization software of a host, sends a mapping table of the overlay network to a physical network interface controller (NIC) associated with the host. The mapping table maps the identification of each of a set of virtual machine (VM) of a tenant on the host to an identification of a tunnel on the overlay network. The method, at the virtualization software, receives a packet from a VM of the tenant. The method sends the packet to the physical NIC. The method, at the physical NIC, encapsulates the packet for transmission over the overlay network by using the mapping table. The method also tags the packet by the virtualization software as a packet that requires encapsulation for transmission in the overlay network prior to sending the packet to the physical NIC. <CIT> relates to a data processing system comprising a host computing device supporting an operating system and a network protocol stack, the network protocol stack being operable to support one or more transport streams by performing transport stream protocol processing of data packets received over the streams. A network interface device is arranged to couple the host computing device to a network and operable to receive data packets over a transport stream supported by the network protocol stack, and a message engine configured to perform upper layer protocol processing. The network interface device is configured to, on receiving a data packet over one of a predetermined set of transport streams, pass the payload data of the data packet to the message engine and the message engine is configured to, in response to receiving the payload data, identify and process any upper layer messages in the payload data in accordance with the upper layer protocol. <CIT> discloses a header processing engine for a network interface device having a buffer for holding one or more data packets each having one or more headers. The header processing engine comprises a command memory, a header recognizer configured to parse the headers of a data packet stored at the buffer so as to identify the type and position of each header in the data packet, a constructor unit having read access to the headers of the data packet, and a processor including an execution pipeline. The header recognizer is further configured to, for each header: (a) select in dependence on the type of the header one or more commands stored at the command memory, and (b) form one or more messages for the constructor unit identifying the selected commands and the position of the header in the data packet, the commands selected for the headers of the data packet being collectively such as to, if executed by the constructor unit, cause the constructor unit to generate a data structure which is such as to be operable to cause the processor to effect processing of the headers of the data packet without accessing the data packet at the buffer, and the constructor unit being configured to receive the messages and execute the commands identified therein.

The disclosure may be summarized by referring to the appended claims. In particular, the invention is defined only in the appended independent claims. Embodiments or examples mentioned in the following description that do not necessarily fall under the scope of the appended claims are to be construed as comparative examples useful for understanding the present invention.

It is an object of the present disclosure to provide a system and a method for improving performance of data processing.

It is an object of the present disclosure to provide a system and a method for forwarding only a portion of the data comprised in data packets received, thereby enabling saving of bandwidth, and consequently improving the system performance.

Other objects of the present disclosure will become apparent from the following description.

According to a first embodiment of the present disclosure, there is provided a communication system comprising at least one smart network interface card ("NIC") provided with a logic/programmable processor and a local memory, and a computing element, wherein a communication bus is used to connect the smart NIC and the computing element in order to enable forwarding of data there-between, wherein the system is characterized in that the smart NIC is configured to receive data packets, to extract data therefrom and to forward to the computing element along the communication bus less than all data comprised in the received data packets, and wherein the data being forwarded preferably comprises data required for making networking decisions (e.g. forwarding, routing) that relate to a respective data packet.

The received data packets are stored at the local memory of the smart NIC.

The extracted data is retrieved from data packet headers and/or from specific pre-defined locations of the data packet payloads.

The data being forwarded to the computing element in dedicated descriptors which form together a MetaPacket.

The dedicated descriptors comprise one or more members of the group that consists of: (<NUM>) memory location indications of where the packets are stored, (<NUM>) timestamps, (<NUM>) statistics, and (<NUM>) packets' validity flags.

According to an embodiment, the processor of the smart NIC is further configured to identify among the data packets received, one or more data packets which their entire content is required (e.g. packets which should be forwarded in their entirety to the software application CPU for carrying out control and/or management tasks), and to forward the identified data packets towards the computing element in their entirety.

In accordance with another embodiment, the processor of the smart NIC is further configured to apply an aging mechanism to packets that are stored at the local memory (e.g. by using the timestamp defined with respect to the descriptors referred to hereinabove).

By still another embodiment, upon processing a MetaPacket by the software application residing at the computing element, the processed MetaPacket is forwarded along a reverse path of the communication bus, and used by the smart NIC processor to extract the corresponding data packet from the local memory and to process it according to the descriptors comprised in the processed MetaPacket (e.g. by using the address stored within the MetaPacket while taking into account other fields of that packet).

According to yet another embodiment, upon determining in accordance with updated information contained in the MetaPacket that the data packet should be forwarded from the smart NIC through an egress port which is different from the ingress port via which that data packet was received, forwarding the data packet to a driver, which in turn will forward the packet to its appropriate egress port.

In accordance with another embodiment, the communication system provided further comprising a driver configured to support two modes of operation, a transparent mode and an explicit mode.

When operating in the transparent mode, the driver is configured to reconstruct MetaPackets into virtual packets by using the metadata, while leaving the remaining of the packet nullified, and when operating in the explicit mode, the driver is configured to forward MetaPackets to a smart NIC aware application, which in turn is configured to operate on MetaPackets received from the driver.

According to another aspect of the disclosure not falling under the scope of the claims, there is provided a method for use in a communication system that comprises at least one smart network interface card ("NIC") provided with a logic/programmable processor and a local memory, and a computing element, and wherein a communication bus is used to connect the smart NIC and the computing element to enable forwarding of data there-between. The method comprises the steps of:.

By still another embodiment of this aspect of the disclosure, the descriptors MetaPacket structure comprises at least one of: data packet's header (e.g. ETH, IP, UDP, TCP, etc.) to enable routing the packet, and an address within the local memory of the stored data packet to enable extracting the data packet later on from the local memory.

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated herein and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate several embodiments of the disclosure and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the embodiments disclosed herein.

Some of the specific details and values in the following detailed description refer to certain examples of the disclosure. However, this description is provided only by way of example.

<FIG> demonstrates a block diagram of a system (<NUM>) construed in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. System <NUM> comprises a plurality of smart NICs (<NUM>), each preferably being a NIC provided with a logic/programmable processor and a local memory, computing elements (e.g. computing nodes) <NUM>, and one or more buses <NUM> connecting there-between, such as the communication buses PCIE, OpenCAPI and the like.

<FIG> illustrates a zoom-in view of part of the system <NUM> demonstrated in <FIG>, presenting a smart NIC <NUM>, a computing element <NUM> and a bus <NUM> connecting between these two elements. In this example, a PCI <NUM> (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is used at each end of the communication bus. PCI is part of the PCI Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format that is independent of any particular processor's native bus.

Smart NIC <NUM> as depicted in the example illustrated in <FIG>, comprises <NUM> X <NUM> Gb ports (<NUM>), configured as ingress/egress ports for receiving and forwarding communication packets, a processor <NUM> and optionally, a local memory <NUM>.

When a data packet arrives at one of the ports <NUM>, it is forwarded to processor <NUM>, which is the smart NIC processing unit, for its processing. During this processing step the packet is stripped off from data which is not required for making networking decisions related to that packet. Most of the data that is relevant for taking packet forwarding/processing related decisions reside within the packet header, or at specific place(s) of the packet payload, in most cases there would be no need to transfer the entire packet from the smart NIC to the decision-making processor. Consequently, a substantial part of the bandwidth that would have been required had the entire packet been transferred, would now be saved. This in turn contributes significantly to the improvement of the overall system performance.

The original arriving packet is stored at local memory <NUM>, whereas the data relevant for taking the forwarding/processing related decisions that has been stripped off from the arriving data, is forwarded towards computing element <NUM> along bus <NUM>. This relevant data is forwarded in a dedicated descriptor that is referred to as MetaPacket.

As explained hereinabove, the MetaPacket includes all required descriptors to enable smart NIC <NUM> to process the packet at a later stage, and to do so at a fast manner, after the computing element <NUM> has completed the operations associated with that packet. These descriptors include one or more of the following: (<NUM>) the memory location of where the packet was stored, (<NUM>) timestamps, (<NUM>) statistics, (<NUM>) packet validity flags, and the like.

Thus, since only relevant data of each packet is forwarded over the two-way bus <NUM> (the packet descriptors), this greatly reduces the amount of data transferred to and from an application, which can either be a smart NIC aware application (<NUM>) or a non-smart NIC aware application (<NUM>), and in general makes the transfer performance to be dependent only on the data packets' arrival rate rather than to be dependent on both, the data packets' arrival rate as well as their size distribution.

In cases where the entire packet content is required (e.g. packets which should be forwarded to the processor for carrying out control and/or management tasks) a whitelist mechanism may preferably be implemented so that data packets that are whitelisted, shall be forwarded in their entirety (in their original format), and will be referred to later on as "whitelist packets". The term "whitelist" as used herein is used to denote a list or a register of entities that provide a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. Entities on this list will be accepted, approved and/or recognized.

By yet another embodiment, the processor of the smart NIC is further configured to apply to the data packets stored at the local memory, an aging mechanism (using the timestamp defined with respect to the descriptors referred to hereinabove), which will be cleared from the local memory upon their timeout, if no explicit request has been made to clear the packets from the local memory (e.g. to send the packets, reset the aging mechanism, or to explicitly delete the packets from the memory) before their respective timeout.

When a processed MetaPacket that has been forwarded along the reverse path of the two-way bus, reaches the smart NIC processor, a corresponding data packet may then be extracted from the local memory and processed according to the descriptors comprised in the MetaPacket (e.g. by using the address stored within the MetaPacket while taking into account other fields of that packet).

The extracted corresponding data packet may then be modified and processed in accordance with the updated information contained in the MetaPacket (e.g. the egress port through which is should be forwarded, whether the data packet should be discarded, etc.). In cases where the egress port is other than the smart NIC ingress port, the packet will be transferred to driver <NUM> which will then forward the data packet to its appropriate egress port.

<FIG> demonstrates an example of a method for carrying out an embodiment of the present invention. The method exemplified comprises the following steps.

Extracting metadata from a data packet that arrives at the smart NIC processor and placing the extracted metadata into a descriptors MetaPacket structure (step <NUM>). The data that is placed into the MetaPacket structure, may include for example the following: headers (ETH, IP, UDP, TCP, etc.) to enable routing the packet; packet memory address location to enable extracting the packet later on from the local memory.

On the other hand, whitelisted data packets are forwarded to a CPU and are not stored at the local memory, while other data packets are stored at the local memory. The MetaPacket as explained above is constructed from a respective packet's data and the corresponding memory address which is added in order to enable retrieval of the packet from the memory later on. After constructing the MetaPacket, it is forwarded to an application CPU (<NUM>, <FIG>), so that MetaPacket / VirtualPacket is processed by the respective application and relevant metadata is edited/added (step <NUM>). The respective MetaPacket /VirtualPacket is then returned to the smart NIC (step <NUM>).

A packet that should be forwarded to an egress port is processed by the smart NIC processor (step <NUM>) by:.

According to still another embodiment of the present invention the smart NIC driver is preferably configured to support two modes of operation, namely a transparent mode and an explicit mode.

When operating in the transparent mode, the smart NIC driver is configured to reconstruct MetaPackets into virtual packets by using the metadata, while leaving the remaining of the packet nullified.

In the reverse direction, the driver transforms the virtual packets into MetaPackets. Thereby, implementing the transparent mode enables non-smart NIC aware applications to run while using the smart NIC logic.

On the other hand, in the explicit mode, the smart NIC driver forwards the MetaPackets to a smart NIC aware application, which will then operate on the MetaPackets received from the driver.

Claim 1:
A communication system (<NUM>) comprising at least one smart network interface card, NIC, (<NUM>) provided with a logic/programmable processor (<NUM>) and a local memory (<NUM>), and a computing element (<NUM>), wherein a communication bus (<NUM>) is used to connect said smart NIC (<NUM>) and said computing element (<NUM>) to enable forwarding data there-between,
wherein said smart NIC (<NUM>) is configured to receive a data packet, store said received data packet at the local memory (<NUM>), z extract data relevant for taking forwarding/processing related decisions, wherein the extracted data includes one or more descriptors, wherein said one or more descriptors is one or more members selected from among a group that consists of: (<NUM>) a memory location where said data packet was stored, (<NUM>) a timestamp, (<NUM>) statistics, (<NUM>) a packet validity flag, and forward the one or more descriptors to said computing element (<NUM>) along said communication bus (<NUM>), thereby forwarding less than all of said data packet to said computing element;
wherein the computing element (<NUM>) is configured to process said descriptors, and to return the processed descriptors to the smart NIC (<NUM>),
wherein said communication system (<NUM>) is further configured to retrieve the data packet that has been stored at the smart NIC local memory (<NUM>), to re-write the retrieved data packet's header according to the processed descriptors, and to forward the data packet via an egress port in accordance to the re-written header.