[SGVLUG] "killer gaming NIC" runs embeded linux...

[Chris Nolan]

On 10/8/07, Christopher Smith <x at xman.org> wrote:
> Sean O'Donnell wrote:
> > Saw this earlier, found it rather interesting, albeit pricey...
> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/2zy5zl
> >
> I actually saw these at Fry's today. The first thought going through my
> mind was along the lines of.... "Gee, for $250 I get a dedicated 400MHz
> processor that handles the network stack for me.... That seems much
> better <sarcasm> than getting the $250 quad-processor 2.4GHz CPU......".
>
> I think things like this are really only for hard core gamers that
> really don't care about the money and frankly aren't considering that
> for network games there are more than enough spare cycles on their CPU's
> to handle the network traffic.

Isn't this just a TOE (TCP Offload Engine) card?  Most server
manufacturers have been offering them for well over a year now and at
gigabit speeds they can make a difference.  I have not been much of a
PC gamer so I am not sure how much traffic is generated by networked
games, but I can't imagine it being enough to make a huge difference.
Most consumer grade connectivity is below a couple of mb/s upload on
the high end.  A heavily loaded web server pushing hundereds of
megabits per second, on the other hand, can free up a lot of CPU
cycles by offloading TCP to a card and bypassing the PCI bus and
system memory.  It is almost a necessity for 10 gigabit ethernet cards
though I do not know how soon we'll be playing with that technology.

BTW, I'm Chris, a linux admin for the past 10+ years and this list was
recommended to me by a friend and PhD candidate from UCSD.  He and I
work together on cutting-edge distributed computing and networking
technologies (him on the design and architecture me on the
implementation).  You guys talk about some fun and interesting stuff.
I hope to participate more in the future.

C