GZIP data compression hardware has a critical role of increasing performance and smashing the monstrous costs of energy in big data systems. To demonstrate the benefits of using GZIP hardware, AHA assembled a web server experiment to compare the performance of serving pages using: • No GZIP • CPU performing GZIP • AHA372 Hardware Accelerators for GZIP Using effective throughput, CPU utilization, and energy efficiency, these were some key results from the experiment: • When the CPU simultaneously serves pages and performs GZIP, it consumes 5x more times energy and throughput drops by almost 5x. • Hardware GZIP has a huge 18x throughput and 17x energy efficiency advantage over the CPU performing GZIP. • With the energy costs of CPU GZIP, the break even point of GZIP hardware is between 10-22 days. This paper shows that GZIP hardware offloading increases network I/O, optimizes workloads, and results in optimal system designs requiring significantly less capital and operational expenditures.

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2. Sales and Contact Information
• Website
- www.aha.com
• Sales Contact
- sales@aha.com
• White Paper to Presentation
- http://www.aha.com/Uploads/GZIP_Benefits_Whitepaper9.pdf
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3. Introduction
• Purpose
- The purpose of this brief is illustrate the benefits hardware
GZIP compression on a 10G Ethernet link using the AHA
372.
• Outline
- AHA Product Introduction
- 10Gbps Web Server Experiment and Results
- Energy Break Even Point of AHA372
3

4. Who we are…
• AHA Products Group
- Business unit of Comtech EF DATA
- Advanced IP Development Center
• Brief History
- Established 1988 on Forward Error Correction
- 1992 Created first CAM in Data Compression
- 2006 Created First GZIP Compression IC
- 2009 Created Fastest GZIP Compression IC
• Expertise
- High Performance Data Compression
- Forward Error Correction
- Hardware and Software Development
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5. AHA37XPCIe Family Features
• Interface
- PCIe 3.0x8 interface
• Algorithms
- GZIP, ZLIB, LZS
• Board by Compression Speed
- AHA371 – 10 Gbps
- AHA372 – 20 Gbps
- AHA374 – 40 Gbps
- AHA378 – 80 Gbps
5PCI Express® Compre
Decompression Accele
FEATURES
Supports open standard algorithms GZIP and
zlib
Supports LZS algorithm
Full duplex operation
PCIe 2.0 x8 interface
High compression ratio
Minimal expansion of uncompressible data
Supports streaming of large files or blocks
Supports compression of intermixed blocks
from different files
Low Profile PCIe Form Factor
APPLICATIONS
WAN acceleration app
Application servers
Load balance applianc
Storage appliances
Web servers
Table 1: AHA371 / AHA 372 Compression Ratio
Files GZIP
AHA37[1,2] – 10-20 Gbps
aha products group
PR
AHA37
40.0 Gbps GZIP Compression/Decom
Ac
FEATURES
Supports open standard algorithms GZIP and
zlib
APPLICATIONS
WAN acceleration applianc
Application servers
AHA37[4-8] – 40-80 Gbps

6. Experiment Setup
• Client Emulator sends HTTP requests
- Requests maximize throughput of 10 G link
• Webserver responds with GZIP’d page
- Requests are run continiously
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 Supermicro X8DTL-6F Motherboard
 Intel Xeon E5620 CPU
 3 X 2GB Kingston KVR13R9S8K3/6I
 Seagate Barracuda ST3160815AS
 Intel 82598EB 10-Gigabit AT2 Server Adapter
 PowerEdge R720 Motherboard
 Intel Xeon E5-2643 3.30GHz (Total 8 cores)
 24 X 4GB RDIMM, 1600MT/s RAM
 Western Digital WD800JD-75MSA2
 Intel 82598EB 10-Gigabit AT2 Server Adapter
10 Gig-E
Page Responses
• No GZIP
• CPU GZIP
• Hardware GZIP
Page RequestsClient Emulator Apache Web Server
120
Power Meter
aha products group
PRODUCT BRIEF
AHA371 / AHA372
PCI Express® Compression and
Decompression Accelerator Card
FEATURES
Supports open standard algorithms GZIP and
zlib
Supports LZS algorithm
Full duplex operation
PCIe 2.0 x8 interface
High compression ratio
Minimal expansion of uncompressible data
Supports streaming of large files or blocks
Supports compression of intermixed blocks
from different files
Low Profile PCIe Form Factor
APPLICATIONS
WAN acceleration appliances
Application servers
Load balance appliances
Storage appliances
Web servers
Table 1: AHA371 / AHA 372 Compression Ratios
40 Gbps Compression:
2x AHA372 20Gbps GZIP Accelerators
aha products group
PRODUCT
AHA371 / AHA3
PCI Express® Compression
Decompression Accelerator C
FEATURES
Supports open standard algorithms GZIP and
zlib
Supports LZS algorithm
Full duplex operation
PCIe 2.0 x8 interface
High compression ratio
Minimal expansion of uncompressible data
Supports streaming of large files or blocks
Supports compression of intermixed blocks
from different files
Low Profile PCIe Form Factor
APPLICATIONS
WAN acceleration appliances
Application servers
Load balance appliances
Storage appliances
Web servers
Table 1: AHA371 / AHA 372 Compression Ratios
 Watts up? PRO ES
 Accuracy: +/- 1.5%
120 VAC

7. Scenarios and Measurements
• Observed Metrics
- Effective throughput of 10Gb Link
 Better compression ratio, more effective throughput
 Experiment average between 1:2, 1:3, compression ratios
- CPU Utilization
- Power/ Throughput (Watt/Gbps) or Energy/Bit (Joule/Gb)
• Compression Scenarios Ran
- No Compression
- CPU Compression : mod_deflate
- AHA Compression : 2 x AHA 372 20Gbps
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8. Experiment Results
8
9 Gbps
15%
16 J/Gb 6.8 J/Gb
59%
35 Gbps2 Gbps
100 %
116 J/Gb
Throughput
CPU Load
Energy
Efficiency
No GZIP CPU GZIP AHA GZIP

9. CPUs are Inefficient at Performing GZIP
• CPU is Crippled
- Serving web pages drops from 9
Gbps to 2Gbps.
• CPU is Inefficient
- 8 Core CPU at 100% load and
consumes 7x more energy.
9
9 Gbps
15%
16 J/Gb
2 Gbps
100 %
116 J/Gb
Throughput
CPU Load
Energy
Efficiency
NoGZIP CPUGZIP
CPUs are not optimal for performing GZIP

10. GZIP Hardware Removes CPU Bottlenecks
• 18x Throughput over CPU
 At full load with 8 cores, CPU GZIP is
only capable of 6% of the throughput
of GZIP hardware.
• Available CPU cycles
 Not performing compression CPU can
perform tasks it is most efficient at.
• 17x energy efficiency
- Less energy cost
10
9 Gbps
15%
16 J/Gb 6.8 J/Gb
59%
35 Gbps2 Gbps
100 %
116 J/Gb
Throughput
CPU Load
Energy
Efficiency
NoGZIP CPUGZIP GZIP
9 Gbps
15%
16 J/Gb
2 Gbps
100 %
116 J/Gb
Throughput
CPU Load
Energy
Efficiency
NoGZIP CPUGZIP
GZIP Hardware is order of magnitudes more efficient at
GZIP than CPUs.

11. Energy Break Even Point (eBEP)
• Assumptions
- Card Price at Low Volumes
- Continuous Data Stream
- Power Usage Effectiveness 1.7
- Normalized Linear Performance
Adjustment for Power Consumption
• Hardware Pays Off FAST!
- 22 Days at Lowest Electricity Cost
11
Cost of Electricity
cents (kW/h)
eBEP of GZIP Hardware
Vs. CPU GZIP
15 22 days
20 17 days
25 14 days
30 11 days
35 10 days
GZIP Hardware Reduces OpEx and CapEx by creating
optimal performing systems using less hardware (CPU).

12. AHA vs Other Compression
12
bzip2, 47, 3.5:1
zlib, 70, 2.8:1
lzo, 640, 1.9:1
aha-gzip,
3.33Gbps/Chan
,2.7:1
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
1 10 100 1000 10000
CompressionRatioto1
Compresion Speed in Mbps
Comparative Compression Performance
(256 MB Wikipedia Corpus)
GZIP Hardware still orders of magnitude faster than the
fastest CPU compression and with good compression
ratios.

13. Integration
• Plug and Play
- Driver installs in minutes
- ZLIB library replacements
- Apache Webserver API
- JAVA API
• Full Engineering Support
- Development engineering support for all appliance integration.
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www.aha.com
sales@aha.com

14. Sales and Contact Information
• Website
- www.aha.com
• Sales Contact
- sales@aha.com
• White Paper to Presentation
- http://www.aha.com/Uploads/GZIP_Benefits_Whitepaper9.pdf
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