Click on SMP?

[Marks, Maurice]

Hi Clickers! I'm working on a project at Compaq that has to do with routers
and I've downloaded your code and tried it out. I'm very impressed with the
concepts and the code. Since I'm working on Alpha rather than x86 I've just
started making a few 64-bit fixes to get it to run on that platform. I'll
send you the changes when I'm done. 

Anyway, I have a more significant question. I'm exploring ideas about
router-like software running on SMP (or actually large NUMA-like)
architectures. Have you thought about how to schedule multiple click
processes or threads on that sort of thing? I'd like to be able to assign
several processors to one routing configuration - where they would share the
routing load, and perhaps have others executing other routing
configurations. If I can make that work I would be able to combine multiple
network infrastructure functions onto a pool of processors, possibly even
doing some dynamic load balancing (assigning more or less processors to a
particular routing configuration).

I dont know if you are interested in this sort of application but if you are
let me know. What I'm going to do after I get the uniprocessor stuffing
running well is to start adapting it for a SMP. This will probably involve
surgery related to the scheduling and the interface to the IO adapters at a
minimum. I'll make the results avilable to you.

So thanks for your work and publications. I'm finding it very useful.

best regards
/maurice marks (senior fellow at Compaq)