Applied Sciences (Aug 2024)

Status-Byte-Assisted RDMA Transmission Mechanism for Optimizing Multi-Task Video Streaming in Edge Computing

  • Donglei Xiao,
  • Huiyue Yi,
  • Wuxiong Zhang,
  • Wenhui Shen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/app14177437
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 17
p. 7437

Abstract

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In the context of the rapid development of edge computing, optimizing data transmission and reducing latency is crucial for efficient collaborative processing among edge servers. Traditional TCP/IP protocols are hindered by high latency and low throughput, while RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) technology addresses these challenges by enabling direct memory access and bypassing the operating system kernel. However, the RDMA data transmission mechanism based on sliding windows requires frequent memory status exchanges in the order of memory blocks, which can limit its ability to handle multiple concurrent tasks within a single Queue Pair (QP). To address the limitations of the traditional sliding window transmission mechanism in multi-task environments, we propose a novel RDMA data transmission mechanism that utilizes status bytes to indicate memory block utilization, which utilizes stateless server connections, and multi-task shared QP transmission strategies. In the proposed mechanism, fine-grained control over memory blocks is achieved through the status byte, thereby enabling effective multi-task real-time video stream transmission. Experimental results show that, compared to the sliding window method, the proposed status-byte-assisted RDMA transmission mechanism provides higher throughput, lower latency, and reduced resource consumption, thus enhancing system scalability and reducing CPU utilization. Moreover, this mechanism achieves more stable throughput than the sliding window method when transmitting multiple real-time video streams in edge computing scenarios, making it particularly suitable for data transmission in such environments.

Keywords