An application-aware load balancing strategy for network processors

Abstract

This paper presents and compares different load balancing strategies in multi-core network processor (NP) chips. In our FlexPath NP system, packets are differentiated according to application-dependent processing requirements and optimized processing paths are provisioned for these applications. We derive a novel load balancing mechanism (S&H) by combining two schemes for stateful and stateless network applications in order to achieve better overall system throughput and reduced packet latencies. We show that appropriate QoS for the different regarded application types can be achieved under varying NP load conditions, while maintaining an almost uniform utilization of the available processing resources. Even though the investigations are focused on the FlexPath NP architecture, the concepts can also be applied to other architectures, where the incoming load has to be distributed among several parallel entities within an NP. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.