Networking

Networking

Purpose

This page defines the low-latency TCP/UDP networking direction for OSAI.

Contents

• Goal
• Queue Ownership
• Polling and Interrupts
• Copy Policy
• Metrics

Goal

OSAI prioritizes low-latency app-agent command traffic over generic maximum throughput. The target is a per-core TCP/UDP path that avoids the generic kernel socket hot path where safe.

Queue Ownership

Networking should support:

• per-core RX/TX queue ownership;
• flow-to-core pinning;
• stable packet processing on the owning core;
• NIC queues assigned to AI Cells where hardware and safety allow.

Polling and Interrupts

Active traffic should use adaptive polling. Idle traffic should fall back to interrupts.

Hot AI cores should not receive unrelated interrupts.

Copy Policy

The initial policy is copy-small and zero-copy-large:

• small command packets are copied if that reduces overhead;
• large payloads use zero-copy where ownership is clear;
• buffer ownership must be explicit.

Metrics

Track p50, p95, p99, and p999 latency. Also track packet drops, queue depth, core handoffs, interrupts, and cross-core processing.

Related Pages

• Driver Model
• Testing and Benchmarking
• Performance Targets