I’m still working on my investigation of the Windows Registered I/O network extensions, RIO, which I started back in October when they became available with the Windows 8 Developer Preview. I’ve improved my test system a little since I started and now have a point to point 10 Gigabit network between my test machines using two 2 Intel 10 Gigabit AT2 cards wired back to back.
My test system isn’t symmetrical, that is I have a much more powerful machine on one end of the link than on the other.
This link, Revisiting Network I/O APIs: The Netmap Framework, via highscalability.com makes for interesting reading. Especially given my current interest in the performance of the Winsock Registered I/O networking extensions, RIO, and the fact that my new network cards are so difficult to fully utilise.
Before I started to look at RIO for inclusion in The Server Framework I did a quick check on the Microsoft BUILD site to see if there were any sessions that dealt with it specifically, I didn’t find any. Once I posted my blog posting I did another check and found this video that deals specifically with RIO. This gives some in depth details of how RIO works and the kinds of performance improvements that Microsoft has witnessed in their labs.
