[j-nsp] [c-nsp] Leaked Video or Not (Linux and Cisco for internal Sales folks)

[James Bensley]

On 29 June 2018 at 13:55, Gert Doering <gert at greenie.muc.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 01:49:46PM +0100, adamv0025 at netconsultings.com wrote:
>> Just wondering what's the latest on the GPU for packet forwarding front (or is that deemed legacy now)?
>
> Last I've heard is that pixel shaders do not map really nicely to the
> work needed for packet forwarding - so it works, but the performance gain
> is not what you'd expect to see.

Which is to be expected right? Typical GPU instruction sets and ALUs
are great for floating point operations which we don't need for packet
processing. Packets typically need low complexity tasks performed at
high rates. Various high end DC switches like Nexus boxes use GDDR5
RAM just as a graphics card would but the processing is done by an
ASIC, which makes sense to me, that is not the place for general
purpose x86 compute chips. This is a specific task.

Cheers,
James.