Attaining High Performance Communications

Technological Advances and Problems of High Performance Communications

An ecosystem of solutions along a stack of technology layers

Cohesively collecting state-of-the-art contributions from leading researchers in industry, national laboratories, and academia, Attaining High Performance Communications: A Vertical Approach discusses various issues pertaining to high performance communications in a particular layer of a vertical stack. It explores efficient interconnection hardware, the architectural aspects of network adapters and their integration with processor cores, the design of scalable and robust high performance end-to-end communications services and protocols, and system services and tools for new multi-core environments.

No single solution applied at one particular layer can help applications solve all performance-related issues with communication services. Instead, this book shows that a coordinated effort is needed among the layers. It covers many different types of technologies and layers across the stack, from the architectural features of the hardware, through the protocols and their implementation in operating system kernels, to the manner in which application services and middleware are using underlying platforms. The book also describes key developments in high-end platforms, high performance interconnection fabrics and communication libraries, and multi- and many-core systems.

This volume addresses the challenges involved in emerging types of communications applications, platforms, and services. Examining each layer in the vertical stack, it illustrates how to eliminate bottlenecks and provide optimization opportunities.