Count of memory copies in *nix systems between packet at NIC and user application?
- by Michael_73
Hi there,
This is just a general question relating to some high-performance computing I've been wondering about. A certain low-latency messaging vendor speaks in its supporting documentation about using raw sockets to transfer the data directly from the network device to the user application and in so doing it speaks about reducing the messaging latency even further than it does anyway (in other admittedly carefully thought-out design decisions).
My question is therefore to those that grok the networking stacks on Unix or Unix-like systems. How much difference are they likely to be able to realise using this method? Feel free to answer in terms of memory copies, numbers of whales rescued or areas the size of Wales ;)
Their messaging is UDP-based, as I understand it, so there's no problem with establishing TCP connections etc. Any other points of interest on this topic would be gratefully thought about!
Best wishes,
Mike