[gentoo-user] Re: PacketShader - firewall using GPU

[James]

Michael Mol <mikemol <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > http://shader.kaist.edu/packetshader/
> > anyone interested in trying?

A firewall router based on a GPU+CPU is a great idea, who's
stability is probably a few years away.

Basis: GPU use very fast memory often with special features,
based on architecture. But the proof is in the pudding; i.e.
such a device being tested in a variety of scenarios. The basic
problem is you have different details on GPU and often the
necessary details of the hardware, are not published in a general
access type of document. Most chip vendors, when they do get
a software firewall router working on a chipset (GPU + CPU)
will most likely want to sell a solution, rather than open
source this solution. It has huge ramification commercially.

So for this to be a fruitful effort, I'd suggest waiting until you
have one of those fancy new AMD chips where the GPU and mutli-core
CPU are on the same die PLUS and open source project.

Intel has nice (CPU) hardware, but video is a pig (dog_slow) on
the Intel GPU. The intel GPU is a DOG......

Nvidia has some nice software offerings, but no robust CPU multi
core to work with the GPU (on the same die). Also, Nvidia has a 
weak history of open-source support. In fact the project you 
mention may not even publish other parts of the sourcecode, according 
to the website. So why would you waste your time on that code offering.


When somebody (GPU team) get's iptables and gentoo running on a new,
integrated (GPU + CPU) AMD chip, just use vanilla tools via
the gentoo organization? Then IP tables just has to be modified
to take advantage of the GPU. Maybe GCC will handle this some day.
maybe AMD will open source some internal knowledge to make it
happen; Maybe not.


> I see a lot of graphs touting high throughput, but what about latency?

This is a good point. Wait until the GPU and CPU are on the same
die... (think AMD). I just do not see Intel or Nvidia being the first
to make this truely a commodity (too much money to made selling the
proprietary solutions). For example, and high-end compiler vendor
could buy an exclusive license from Intel/Nvidia, to make this
a unique and expensive offering. Think DOD contractors that 
limit the solution to VME buss based systems (just a random thought).

> They also tout a huge preallocated packet buffer, and I'm not sure
> that's a good thing, either. It may or may not cause latency problems,
> depending on how they use it.

Traditionally, searching and sorting algos smoke on GPU and GPU
type ram. Other processes not so wonderful. That's why you need
the GPU to offload processes, that it can run much faster than
the multi-core CPU. Both are needed most of the time.

> They don't talk about latency at all, except for one sentence:

I think that site is just trying to get folks to do some testing
for them. They do not seem to be 'open-source' minded, imho....

Personally, I would not waist my time. But do watch out for new
offerings from AMD..... Maybe Intel (naw, just kidding, they
never release or support anything open source, until they
have to....) I bet those developers had to sign some serious
NDAs with some nasty corporate types of lawyers....

just my opinion
hth,
James