Paper Title: Using SmartNICs and Buffer Management to Improve NVMe over TCP Performance

Paper Abstract: Traditional NVMe storage requires complex and expensive RDMA technology for scale out performance in hyperconverged and distributed environments. While RDMA is accepted as necessary for storage performance it's complexity and expense make it challenging to deploy widely. In order for NVMe over TCP to provide IT departments with the same high bandwidth, low latency performance as iWARP and RoCE functional improvements are required. Utilizing DCTCP and Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) Ethernet network adapters can provide equivalent latency and bandwidth for NVMe over TCP storage without the cost and complexity of RoCE based solutions, by creating a lossless fabric with decreased tail latency. Using standard TCP and standard Ethernet, administrators can deploy NVMe-oF in their data centers.

Paper Author: Ron Renwick, Sr Director Product Mktg/SmartNICS, NVIDIA

Author Bio: Ron Renwick serves as VP of Products at Netronome Systems. In this role, Ron is responsible for all existing Netronome hardware products and development of future solutions. With extensive background in server adapters for networking and storage, Ron understands the challenges and needs of customers for cost-effective server based networking solutions. Prior to Netronome, Ron was Product Line Manager for Fibre Channel OEM adapters at Emulex. Prior to Emulex, Ron has run the cloud orchestration software project at Platform Computing (now IBM) in addition to server and storage adapter product management roles at Xsigo and SGI. Ron holds a BSME from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from Santa Clara University.