OVS Offload Models Used with NICs and SmartNICs: Pros and Cons
As SmartNICs become more popular, more decision makers at companies are being asked to look at the way SmartNICs work – specifically the different offload models related to the OVS datapath, and the pros and cons of each model. In this blog, I will go through and explain these various models. As we go through each model, you will realize that not all of them require offload of the OVS datapath to NIC hardware. In some cases the datapath is actually moved up to the user space as well (some call it on-loading). I will cover all of them using a consistent tabular format for easy readability and comparison. Here we go…