SoftINA: A Softwarized In-Network Aggregator for Distributed Applications

Given that in-network aggregation (INA) has become a promising and generic performance acceleration solution for various distributed applications, in this paper, we explore the possibility of implementing aggregators in software with a case study. We not only identify the necessity and advantages of providing software-based INA for distributed applications but we also prototype SoftINA, an efficient softwarized in-network aggregator built upon the open-source virtual switch platform of BESS, together with a flexible packet format design. Testbed-based evaluations show the high efficiency of SoftINA-It achieves an aggregation throughput of about 3.4 ~ 16.3 Gbps for several flat-vector streams by only using a single CPU core.