TY - JOUR
T1 - Operating Systems and Hypervisors for Network Functions
T2 - A Survey of Enabling Technologies and Research Studies
AU - Thyagaturu, Akhilesh S.
AU - Shantharama, Prateek
AU - Nasrallah, Ahmed
AU - Reisslein, Martin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 IEEE.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Scalable and flexible communication networks increasingly conduct the packet processing for Network Functions (NFs) in General Purpose Computing (GPC) platforms. The input/output (I/O)-intensive and latency-sensitive packet processing is challenging for the operating systems and hypervisors running on GPC platforms. This article surveys the existing enabling technologies and research studies on operating system and hypervisor aspects that directly influence the packet processing for NFs on GPC platforms. We organize this survey according to the main categories abstraction approach, memory access, and I/O strategy. We further categorize abstraction approach technologies and research studies into the categories operation systems, hypervisors, and containers. We partition the memory access category into the two sub-categories of memory allocation and memory access, while we partition the I/O strategy category into the sub-categories I/O device virtualization and I/O device access. Our survey gives a comprehensive summary of the capabilities and limitations of the existing enabling technologies and researched approaches for abstraction, memory access, and I/O for NF packet processing. We outline critical future research directions for advancing NF packet processing on GPC platforms.
AB - Scalable and flexible communication networks increasingly conduct the packet processing for Network Functions (NFs) in General Purpose Computing (GPC) platforms. The input/output (I/O)-intensive and latency-sensitive packet processing is challenging for the operating systems and hypervisors running on GPC platforms. This article surveys the existing enabling technologies and research studies on operating system and hypervisor aspects that directly influence the packet processing for NFs on GPC platforms. We organize this survey according to the main categories abstraction approach, memory access, and I/O strategy. We further categorize abstraction approach technologies and research studies into the categories operation systems, hypervisors, and containers. We partition the memory access category into the two sub-categories of memory allocation and memory access, while we partition the I/O strategy category into the sub-categories I/O device virtualization and I/O device access. Our survey gives a comprehensive summary of the capabilities and limitations of the existing enabling technologies and researched approaches for abstraction, memory access, and I/O for NF packet processing. We outline critical future research directions for advancing NF packet processing on GPC platforms.
KW - Acceleration offloading
KW - I/O virtualization
KW - container
KW - hypervisor
KW - memory access
KW - virtual machine
KW - virtualization approach
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U2 - 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3194913
DO - 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3194913
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85135751721
SN - 2169-3536
VL - 10
SP - 79825
EP - 79873
JO - IEEE Access
JF - IEEE Access
ER -