Abstract
Efficient VM communication in Cloud computing infrastructures is an important aspect of HPC application deployment in clusters of VMs. In this paper we present Xen2MX, a high-performance messaging protocol, binary compatible with Myrinet/MX and wire compatible with MXoE. Its design is based on MX and its port over generic Ethernet adapters, Open-MX. Xen2MX combines the zero-copy characteristics of Open-MX with Xen’s memory sharing techniques, in order to construct the most efficient data path for high-performance communication, achievable with software techniques. Using Xen2MX, we are able to reduce the round-trip latency to 14μs, compared to directly attached devices (13μs) and to a software bridge setup (44μs).
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
References
Murray, D.G., Hand, S.: Scripting the cloud with skywriting. In: Proceedings of the 2nd USENIX Conference on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing, HotCloud 2010, p. 12. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2010)
Murray, D.G., Schwarzkopf, M., Smowton, C., Smith, S., Madhavapeddy, A., Hand, S.: CIEL: a universal execution engine for distributed data-flow computing. In: NSDI 2011, p. 9. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2011)
PCI SIG: SR-IOV (2007), http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/iov/single_root/
Liu, J., Huang, W., Abali, B., Panda, D.K.: High performance VMM-bypass I/O in virtual machines. In: ATEC 2006: Proc. of the USENIX 2006 Annual Technical Conference, p. 3. USENIX, Berkeley (2006)
Nanos, A., Koziris, N.: MyriXen: Message Passing in Xen Virtual Machines over Myrinet and Ethernet. In: 4th Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cloud Computing, The Netherlands (2009)
Nanos, A., Goumas, G., Koziris, N.: Exploring I/O Virtualization Data paths for MPI Applications in a Cluster of VMs: A Networking Perspective. In: VHPC 2010, Naples-Ischia, Italy (2010)
Nanos, A., Nikoleris, N., Psomadakis, S., Kozyri, E., Koziris, N.: A Smart HPC Interconnect for Clusters of Virtual Machines. In: VHPC 2011, France (2011)
Barham, P., Dragovic, B., Fraser, K., Hand, S., Harris, T., Ho, A., Neugebauer, R., Pratt, I.A., Warfield, A.: Xen and the Art of Virtualization. In: SOSP 2003: Proc. of the 19th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pp. 164–177. ACM, NY (2003)
Atchley, S., Dillow, D., Shipman, G.M., Geoffray, P., Squyres, J.M., Bosilca, G., Minnich, R.: The Common Communication Interface (CCI). In: IEEE 19th Annual Symposium on High Performance Interconnects, HOTI 2011, Santa Clara, CA, USA, August 24-26 (2011)
Myricom: Myrinet eXpress (MX): A High Performance, Low-Level, Message-Passing Interface for Myrinet (2006), http://www.myri.com/scs/MX/doc/mx.pdf
Goglin, B.: High-Performance Message Passing over generic Ethernet Hardware with Open-MX. Parallel Computing 37(2), 85–100 (2011), Open-MX
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nanos, A., Koziris, N. (2013). Xen2MX: Towards High-Performance Communication in the Cloud. In: Caragiannis, I., et al. Euro-Par 2012: Parallel Processing Workshops. Euro-Par 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7640. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36949-0_64
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36949-0_64
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36948-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36949-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)