Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!gyre.umd.EDU!chris
From: chris@gyre.umd.EDU (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: RE: offloading the protocols
Message-ID: <8803220616.AA02999@gyre.umd.edu>
Date: 22 Mar 88 06:16:34 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

On the other hand, putting the Jacobson/Karels TCP into the
board may produce something significantly slower than what you
get when you run the protocol on a Sun-3.

Even if the interface is right.

Even if you have a good DMA path.

No matter how low the overhead is.

The problem, you see, is that the Sun-3 CPU may be significantly
faster than the one on your protocol card.  That 68020 runs rings
around the 80x8x in some of those external protocol boards.  The
latest Ethernet chips from Intel and AMD are fast, but they are
not CPUs.  There may be some protocol boards that use fast hardware
---if they do not exist now they probably will soon---but I have
never seen one myself.

Chris