Are processors free? Impact on RDMA and protocol off-load technologies

The growing prevalence of multi-core and multi-threaded processors combined the rapid commodization of hardware raises numerous questions about how best to utilize this processing power. Will the cost of a processor core drop to a point where processors are considered free? Will such a cost point enable processor cores to be cost-effectively dedicated to platform-specific services such as storage and inter-processor communication infrastructures and applications? What impact might this trend have on RDMA (remote direct memory access) and protocol off-load technologies such as InfiniBand and RDMA/TCP (aka iWARP)? This presentation examines the potential impact and how these technologiies might evolve in the comin years.