Javia: A Java interface to the virtual interface architecture

The Virtual Interface (VI) architecture has become the industry standard for user-level network interfaces. This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of Javia, a Java interface to the VI architecture. Javia explores two points in the design space. The first approach manages buffers in C and requires data copies between the Java heap and native buffers. The second approach relies a-level buffer abstraction that eliminates the copies in the first approach. Javia achieves an effective bandwidth of 80Mbytes/sec for 8Kbyte messages, which is within 1% of those achieved by C programs. Performance evaluations of parallel matrix multiplication and of the active messages communication protocol show that Javia can serve as an efficient building block for Java cluster applications. Keywords Java, Virtual Interface Architecture, user-level network interfaces, high-performance communication, parallel matrix multiplication, active messages.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2000
• Where: CONCURRENCY
• Authors: Chi-Chao Chang, Thorsten von Eicken
• Keywords: CONCURRENCY 2000, Parallel Matrix Multiplication, User-level Network, Virtual Interface