PROVIDING SERVICES IN A SYSTEM HAVING A HARDWARE ACCELERATION PLANE AND A SOFTWARE PLANE

摘要

A service mapping component (SMC) is described herein for allocating services to hardware acceleration components in a data processing system based on different kinds of triggering events. The data processing system is characterized by a hardware acceleration plane that is made up of the hardware acceleration components, together with a software plane that is made up of a plurality of software-driven host components. The SMC is configured to select, in response to a triggering event, at least one hardware acceleration component in the hardware plane to perform a service, based on at least one mapping consideration and based on availability information. Each host component in the software plane is then configured to access the service on one or more of the selected hardware acceleration component(s) via an associated local hardware acceleration component, or via some other route.