ASNI: Redefining the interface between SmartNICs and applications#

Nikita Tyunyayev; Clément Delzotti (UCLouvain); Haggai Eran (NVIDIA); Tom Barbette (UCLouvain, Belgium)

• Why: As NICs get "smarter," the descriptor/driver software interface is becoming the bottleneck — the paper frames it as a 300-cycle-per-packet budget at NFV speeds, of which even DPDK eats 20%. This is a proposal to redesign that boundary, which matters to anyone betting on SmartNIC-offloaded dataplanes.
• What: An argument and prototype for NICs adapting to application needs rather than drivers acting as translators: a datapath API that compiles into different buffer-management models per application, tailoring packet descriptors so the application receives packets precisely in the form it needs. Reported result: 2.2× more traffic served at equal loss constraints vs. state of the art (from abstract only).
• How: Analysis of multiple packet-buffer and data-organization models across application classes, then a minimal-driver design where packet descriptor layout is generated per application and driver work is removed from the datapath. Prototyped on NVIDIA BlueField 3.
• Where applicable: NFV and high-packet-rate host networking on BlueField-class SoCs. The vision is general, but the prototype is BlueField 3-specific; treat it as evidence for a design direction rather than a deployable API today.