Patent ID: 8191073

Claim:
A method for improving the performance of a multi-processor system, the method comprising: providing M general-purpose processors from N general-purpose processors to perform a a network polling task, wherein N is greater than M; and modifying the M general-purpose processors, wherein the modification of the M general-purpose processors prevents the M general-purpose processors to perform tasks other than the network polling task and the N−M (N minus M) general-purpose processors continue to perform operating system operations; wherein the M general-purpose processors are dedicated as network processors (NPs), and the method further comprising: bypassing network interface controller (NIC) initialization during normal boot of the operating system; with regard to the M general purpose processors, disabling interrupts for context switching; reserving memory in a shared memory as a pseudo NIC; and performing network polling by coupling the NPs and network interface controllers, via the pseudo NIC, to facilitate communication between the NPs and network interface controllers.