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

[Christopher Smith]

Chris Nolan wrote:
> 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?
See, there you go thinking with your logical distributed computing mind. :-)

No, it is much more than that. This is a processor with memory and an OS
(Linux) that you can actually run applications (like a game server) on.

> Most server
> manufacturers have been offering them for well over a year now and at
> gigabit speeds they can make a difference.
Very true. I've yet to see a game that can come close to saturating gigE
though. Even if it could, with modern CPU's you can get pretty close
just by using jumbo frames to reduce the interrupt rate (plus with
multicore you can have a dedicated core for handling the interrupts,
although that'd probably freak out hard core gamers ;-). TSO will get
you further, but I'd be impressed if a gamer could notice the difference.

Honestly, the most useful thing I saw with the board was the ability to
simulate latency delays, which of course is easy to do in Linux but
would probably require a bit of work on Windows without the help of a
special driver.
> 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.
>   
Hey, welcome aboard Chris. Why do I feel like I know you from somewhere?

--Chris