Client
Our client was involved in the development of electronic systems for applications in the defense industry.
Project
The client had developed electronic systems which were not able to generate enough processing power to introduce new functionality or provide needed processing power. The customer wanted to off-load some of the TCP/IP functionality using an additional PCI board acting as an independent system, but without compromising any of the functionality.
Challenges
The customer wanted GDA to create with a solution to help them to improve the processing power of the host system. The system Engineers at GDA managed to perform a simulated model to offload TCP/IP layer functions using two GDA-designed PCI boards running embedded Linux, which were used as host and target systems. The customer awarded the project to GDA with the expectation that GDA would implement the solution for their host system running VxWorks and the PCI target running embedded Linux.
Solution
The GDA Software team developed a host VxWorks driver and a target Linux driver that communicate using the PCI space. The host driver interrupts at the socket layer and passes the IP packets to the target over PCI space. The Target interface processes the IP packets further and transmits using its Gigabit Ethernet physical interface. The incoming packets to the target are processed completely in the target hardware itself, while the processed packets are sent back to the host application socket layer over the PCI interface.
Benefits
The TCP/IP offload driver helped reduce the TCP/IP processing at the host, making the host processor available for handling the new functions. Of note, the host applications are not disturbed and require no changes. This represents a very cost effective off-the-shelf software solution for systems with a PCI interface, where the entire host TCP/IP functions can be completely off-loaded to the target system. This gains the valuable host processor time for other critical functions. |