SmartNIC has recently emerged as an attractive device to accelerate distributed systems. However, there has been no comprehensive characterization of SmartNIC especially on the network part. This paper presents the first comprehensive study of off-path SmartNIC. Our experimental study uncovers the key performance characteristics of the communication among the client, SmartNIC SoC, and the host. We find without considering SmartNIC hardware architecture, communications with it can cause up to 48% bandwidth degradation due to performance anomalies. We also propose implications to address the anomalies.

翻译：智能网卡最近作为一种加速分布式系统的有吸引力的设备而出现。然而，目前缺乏对智能网卡，特别是其网络部分的全面特性描述。本文首次对全路径外智能网卡进行了综合研究。我们的实验研究揭示了客户端、智能网卡系统级芯片和主机之间通信的关键性能特征。我们发现，如果不考虑智能网卡的硬件架构，与其通信可能因性能异常导致高达48%的带宽退化。我们还提出了解决这些异常问题的启示性建议。