Enabling High Bandwidth Applications By High-Performance Multicast Transfer Protocol Processing

A large range of applications exists with demand for high-performance point-to-point and point-tomultipoint communication. Existing communication subsystems frequently represent a major performance bottleneck. To overcome this bottleneck, a framework for high-performance multicast transfer protocol processing is presented, based on hardware support for multicast error control in transmitters and in dedicated intermediate systems called Group Communication Servers. The design of a protocol processing coprocessor for selective retransmissions by end systems and servers in multicast scenarios is presented. High scalability for a large number of receivers can be ensured by the deployment of a VLSI component for list management of acknowledgement processing. The integration of the VLSI component into a generic coprocessor (the Generic ATM Protocol Processing Unit, GAPPU) is shown. Details of processing delays and implementation costs of the proposed hardware implementation are given, and compared with measurements of a typical software implementation.