| 摘要 |
The present invention is directed to a method and computer program product for offloading specific processing tasks that would otherwise be performed in a computer system's processor and memory, to a peripheral device, or devices, that are connected to the computer. The computing task is then performed by the peripheral, thereby saving computer system resources for other computing tasks and increasing the overall computing efficiency of the computer system. In one preferred embodiment, the disclosed method is utilized in a layered network model, wherein computing tasks (304) that are typically performed in network applications are instead offloaded to the network interface card (NIC) peripheral. An application executing on the computer system first queries (202) the processing, or task offload capabilities of the NIC, and then selectively enables (204, 206) those capabilities that may be subsequently needed by the application. |
