A HyperTransport Network Interface Controller For Ultra-low Latency Message Transfers

This white paper presents the implementation of a high-performance HyperTransport-enabled Network Interface Controller (NIC), named Virtualized Engine for Low Overhead (VELO). The direct connect architecture and efficiency of HyperTransport produce an NIC capable of sub-microsecond latency. The prototype implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) delivers a communication latency of 970 ns between two computing nodes. Such low latency almost closes the gap between remote memory access and local memory access in distributed computing systems.