Systems and methods for adaptive interrupt coalescing in a converged network

1. An information handling system comprising:

one or more processors in communication with a network interface card (NIC);

one or more interfaces for receiving frames through the NIC when the information handling system is coupled to an external network device; and

a memory in communication with the one or more processors, the memory storing a classification matrix used to generate a current interrupt throttling rate from a plurality of candidate interrupt throttling rates that are applied to the received frames according to at least two properties of each received frame.

2. The information handling system of claim 1 , wherein the at least two properties include a frame size and a class-of-service indicator.

3. The information handling system of claim 1 , further comprising a plurality of counters configured to count a number of frames from the received frames that are associated with each of the plurality of candidate interrupt throttling rates, the association being based on the at least two properties.

4. The information handling system of claim 3 , wherein the plurality of counters accumulate during a first period, reset at an end of the first period, and accumulate during a second period after the first period.

5. The information handling system of claim 1 , wherein the current interrupt throttling rate is applied to received frames during a first period.

6. The information handling system of claim 1 , wherein the current interrupt throttling rate is based in part on a previous-period interrupt throttling rate, the previous-period throttling rate being applied to the received frames during a second period, the second period preceding a first period, the current interrupt throttling rate being applied during the first period.

7. An information handling system comprising:

a first network device having a first link and a second link, the first link coupling the first network device to a first network and the second link coupling the first network device to a second network;

a server having a network interface card for communication with the first network device and receiving a plurality of frames therefrom over a third link, the server including:

one or more processors in communication with the network interface card;

a memory in communication with the one or more processors, the memory storing

a classification matrix used to generate a current interrupt throttling rate from a plurality of interrupt throttling rates that are applied to the plurality of frames according to at least two properties of each received frame,

wherein the memory is in communication with the one or more processors and the plurality of frames are received from both the second network and the first network.

8. The information handling system of claim 7 , wherein the network interface card comprises a plurality of counters configured to count each frame of the plurality of frames according to at least two properties.

9. The information handling system of claim 7 , wherein the frames of the plurality of frames that are received from the second network comprise Fibre Channel frames.

10. The information handling system of claim 7 , wherein the first network comprises an Ethernet network and the second network comprises a Fibre Channel storage area network.

11. The information handling system of claim 7 , wherein the classification matrix includes a set of counter data for a first period and a set of candidate interrupt throttling rates, the set of candidate interrupt throttling rates being based on one or more aspects of the server.

12. The information handling system of claim 11 , wherein the one or more aspects of the server includes at least one of:

a clock speed of the one or more processors,

a quantity of processing cores,

a cache size,

a threading availability,

an amount of random-access memory (RAM), and

a size of a translation lookaside buffer.

13. The information handling system of claim 7 , wherein an exponential smoothing algorithm is used to calculate the current interrupt throttling rate for a first period.

14. A method for providing adaptive interrupt coalescing in a network, the method comprising:

receiving a plurality of frames from the network at a network interface controller during a first period;

generating a current interrupt throttling rate based on at least two properties of each frame of the plurality of frames; and

applying the current interrupt throttling rate to a subsequent plurality of frames during a second period.

15. The method of claim 14 , further comprising:

counting each frame of the plurality of frames; and

forming a classification matrix, the classification matrix indicating a count of each frame of the plurality of frames as categorized according to the at least two properties during the first period.

16. The method of claim 14 , further comprising:

counting each frame of the plurality of frames according to a frame size; and counting each frame of the plurality of frames according to a class-of-service indicator.

17. The method of claim 15 , wherein generating the current interrupt throttling rate further comprises: identifying a position of a highest count in the classification matrix; matching the position of the highest count in the classification matrix with a candidate interrupt threshold matrix to select a current candidate interrupt throttling rate.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein the current candidate interrupt throttling rate is determined by a cell of a candidate interrupt throttling rate matrix.

19. The method of claim 14 , wherein in generating the current interrupt throttling rate comprises: determining a current candidate interrupt throttling rate; retrieving a previous-period interrupt throttling rate; and combining the current candidate interrupt throttling rate and the previous-period interrupt throttling rate to form the current interrupt throttling rate.

20. The method of claim 14 , wherein the generating the current interrupt throttling rate comprises performing an exponential smoothing operation on a current candidate interrupt throttling rate and at least one previous-period interrupt throttling rate.