TCP segmentation offload in a server on a chip

摘要

A system and method are provided for performing transmission control protocol segmentation on a server on a chip using coprocessors on the server chip. A system processor manages the TCP/IP stack and prepares a large (64 KB) single chunk of data to be sent out via a network interface on the server on a chip. The system software processes this and calls the interface device driver to send the packet out. The device driver, instead of sending the packet out directly on the interface, calls a coprocessor interface and delivers some metadata about the chunk of data to the interface. The coprocessor segments the chunk of data into a maximum transmission unit size associated with the network interface and increments a sequential number field in the header information of each packet before sending the segments to the network interface.