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Zero Copy I: User-Mode Perspective

Issue 105

From Issue #105
January 2003

Jan 01, 2003  By Dragan Stancevic
 in
Explaining what is zero-copy functionality for Linux, why it's useful and where it needs work.
Portability Issues

One of the problems with the sendfile system call, in general, is the lack of a standard implementation, as there is for the open system call. Sendfile implementations in Linux, Solaris or HP-UX are quite different. This poses a problem for developers who wish to use zero copy in their network data transmission code.

One of the implementation differences is Linux provides a sendfile that defines an interface for transmitting data between two file descriptors (file-to-file) and (file-to-socket). HP-UX and Solaris, on the other hand, can be used only for file-to-socket submissions.

The second difference is Linux doesn't implement vectored transfers. Solaris sendfile and HP-UX sendfile have extra parameters that eliminate overhead associated with prepending headers to the data being transmitted.

Looking Ahead

The implementation of zero copy under Linux is far from finished and is likely to change in the near future. More functionality should be added. For example, the sendfile call doesn't support vectored transfers, and servers such as Samba and Apache have to use multiple sendfile calls with the TCP_CORK flag set. This flag tells the system more data is coming through in the next sendfile calls. TCP_CORK also is incompatible with TCP_NODELAY and is used when we want to prepend or append headers to the data. This is a perfect example of where a vectored call would eliminate the need for multiple sendfile calls and delays mandated by the current implementation.

One rather unpleasant limitation in the current sendfile is it cannot be used when transferring files greater than 2GB. Files of such size are not all that uncommon today, and it's rather disappointing having to duplicate all that data on its way out. Because both sendfile and mmap methods are unusable in this case, a sendfile64 would be really handy in a future kernel version.

Conclusion

Despite some drawbacks, zero-copy sendfile is a useful feature, and I hope you have found this article informative enough to start using it in your programs. If you have a more in-depth interest in the subject, keep an eye out for my second article, titled “Zero Copy II: Kernel Perspective”, where I will dig a bit more into the kernel internals of zero copy.

Further Information

email: visitor@xalien.org

Dragan Stancevic is a kernel and hardware bring-up engineer in his late twenties. He is a software engineer by profession but has a deep interest in applied physics and has been known to play with extremely high voltages in his free time.

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Nice article on ZeroCopy

bharath shetty's picture
Submitted by bharath shetty (not verified) on Tue, 11/10/2009 - 23:20.

Nice article on ZeroCopy

sendfile/sendfile64 on Solaris

Tim Spriggs's picture
Submitted by Tim Spriggs (not verified) on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 16:15.

It looks like it has been a while since this article was written. At least OpenSolaris (and perhaps earlier) supports sendfile on files larger than 2 GB when the application is compiled as 64-bit, otherwise sendfile64 must be used. The sendfile(3EXT) manpage has this description:

sendfile - send files over sockets or copy files to files

so sendfile has the ability to copy files/buffers to sockets as well as files.

sendfilev also exists and supports vector arguments as stated above.

In any case, great article! I like the progression of less and less copies.

sendfile

anupamasandeep's picture
Submitted by anupamasandeep (not verified) on Fri, 12/19/2008 - 07:14.

This article is ok if we want to know about the theory.i want to know the implimentation side. i want to compare it with the copy command.so i would like to go through the code for this two. so if you include the code it will be more helpful for us to do.........so please the favour

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